Cross-Nativity Marriages and Human Capital Levels of Children

A common perception about immigrant assimilation is that association with natives necessarily speeds the process by which immigrants become indistinguishable from natives. Using 2000 Census data, this paper casts doubt on this presumption by examining the effect of an immigrant's marriage to a native, a measure of social integration, on dropout rates of children from these marriages. Although second-generation immigrants with one native parent generally have lower dropout rates than those with two foreign-born parents, the relationship reverses when steps are taken to control for observable and unobservable background characteristics. That is, immigrants that marry natives have children that are more likely to dropout of high school than immigrants that marry other immigrants. Moreover, gender differences in the effect of marriage to a native disappear in specifications which control for the endogeneity of the marriage decision.immigration, intermarriage, education

Interethnic marriage decisions: a choice between ethnic and educational similarities

This paper examines the effect of education on intermarriage and specifically, whether the mechanisms through which education affects intermarriage differ by immigrant generation and race. We consider three main paths through which education affects marriage choice. First, educated people may be better able to adapt to different customs and cultures making them more likely to marry outside of their ethnicity. Second, because the educated are less likely to reside in ethnic enclaves, meeting potential spouses of the same ethnicity may involve higher search costs. Lastly, if spouse-searchers value similarities in education as well as ethnicity, then they may be willing to substitute similarities in education for ethnicity when evaluating spouses. Thus, the effect of education will depend on the availability of same-ethnicity potential spouses with a similar level of education. Using U.S. Census data, we find evidence for all three effects for the population in general. However, assortative matching on education seems to be relatively more important for the native born, for the foreign born that arrived at a fairly young age, and for Asians. We conclude by providing additional pieces of evidence suggestive of our hypotheses

Persistent spin currents in an elastic Landau system

We consider a neutral particle with permanent magnetic dipole moment in an elastic medium with the presence of a uniform distribution of screw dislocations interacting with a radial electric field. We show that the uniform distribution of dislocations plays the role of an effective uniform magnetic field, and obtain a spectrum of energy which depends on the Aharonov-Casher geometric phase [Y. Aharonov and A. Casher, Phys. Rev. Lett. 53, 319 (1984)]. Moreover, from the dependence of energy levels on the Aharonov-Casher geometric phase, we calculate the persistent spin currents in this elastic Landau system

I’ll marry you if you get me a job: cross-nativity marriages and immigrant employment rates

This paper tests whether marriage to a native affects the probability that an immigrant is employed. We provide a theoretical background which explains how marriage to a native may positively or negatively affect an immigrant’s employment probability. Utilizing the 2000 U.S. Census, we first look at the effect of cross-nativity marriages on employment using a linear probability model. Then, we estimate a two stage least squares model instrumenting for cross-nativity marriages using local marriage market conditions. Results from a linear probability model controlling for the usual measures of human capital and immigrant assimilation suggest that marriage to a native increases the employment probability of an immigrant by approximately 5 percentage points. When controlling for the endogeneity of the intermarriage decision, marriage to a native increases the employment probability by about 11 percentage points. We provide alternative explanations and suggest policy implications

Intermarriage and immigrant employment: the role of networks

The social integration of immigrants is believed to be an important determinant of immigrants’ labor market outcomes. Using 2000 U.S. Census data, we examine how and why marriage to a native, one measure of social assimilation, affects immigrant employment rates. We show that even when controlling for a variety of human capital and assimilation measures, marriage to a native increases the probability that an immigrant is employed. An instrumental variables approach which exploits variation in marriage market conditions suggests that the relationship between marriage decisions and employment rates is not likely to arise from positive selection into marrying a native. We then present several pieces of evidence suggesting that networks obtained through marriage play an important part in explaining this effect

Geometric Phases in Graphitic Cones

In this article we use a geometric approach to study geometric phases in graphitic cones. The spinor that describes the low energy states near the Fermi energy acquires a phase when transported around the apex of the cone, as found by a holonomy transformation. This topological result can be viewed as an analogue of the Aharonov-Bohm effect. The topological analysis is extended to a system with $n$ cones, whose resulting configuration is described by an effective defect.Comment: 4 pages, revtex