Essays on marriage, migration, and integration

Farahzadi, Shadi (2024) Essays on marriage, migration, and integration. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This thesis comprises three chapters centered around immigrants and their integration, with a particular focus on the marriage market. In Chapter 1, I introduce a novel matching model that accounts for the potential of migration. Unlike closed-market models, this framework allows individuals to find matches beyond borders. By linking individual preferences within matches to the final observed matching outcomes in the market, I establish econometric specifications for identifying preferences from observed matching and migration data. Additionally, I conduct Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate the performance of the econometric methods employed. In Chapter 2, I leverage the model developed in Chapter 1 to estimate preference parameters in the marriage market. I investigate whether the predominant driver of marriage migration is the desire to marry someone from the same cultural background (endogamy preferences) or the potential gains from migrating to a higher-income country (migration gains). Focusing on Muslims in the UK, where approximately half opt to marry someone from abroad, the findings show that the primary reason for the high incidence of marriage migration among Muslims is their preference for endogamous marriages, suggesting that increased migration costs imposed by the government would not substantially impact their integration. Chapter 3 focuses on the impact of an exogenous shock to marriage preferences on the matching outcome, using the 9/11 attacks as an exogenous shock to preferences for mixing among Muslims and non-Muslims in the US. The results show that following 9/11, the probability of intermarriage among Muslims decreased by 10% compared to similar groups. Additionally, Muslims who chose to marry outside their group after 9/11 were found to match with higher-educated spouses than before the event. Conversely, non-Muslim Americans who married Muslims tended to match with lower-educated spouses post-9/11, suggesting an increase in the disutility of a mixed match among Muslims, but not among non-Muslims.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2024 Shadi Farahzadi
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
Sets:	Departments > Economics
Supervisor:	Rubinstein, Yona and Michaels, Guy and Manning, Alan
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4711

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