Segregation Drives Class, Not Race, Marriages

A new NBER working paper finds that greater exposure (less residential segregation) meaningfully increases marriages across parental‑income lines but has no detectable effect on Black–White intermarriage. A spatial marriage‑market model in the paper estimates residential segregation explains over one‑third of class‑based marital sorting but under 5% of racial sorting. — If true, policies that reduce residential segregation may reduce class endogamy and economic stratification but will do little alone to change racial assortative mating—so different causes and remedies are needed for class versus race mixing.