Assortative Mating Patterns in Mexico by Education, Skin Color, and Age Using the Mexican Family Life Survey

Erika Arenas, University of California, Los Angeles

In this paper, I will investigate assortative mating patterns using a novel dataset collected in Mexico, a module of the Mexican Family Life Survey. These data collects retrospective partner histories (i.e. marriages, consensual unions, dating relationships, or any six month relationship) which include socio-demographic characteristics of each partner, as well as their skin tone. The first contribution of this paper will be to describe assortative mating patterns using these data, focusing on education, skin tone, and age. To do so, I will rely on traditional homogamy log-linear models. I will take advantage of the retrospective partner histories to make a second contribution. By observing three types of relationships (i.e. partners not living together, consensual unions and marriages) I will be able to investigate patterns of assortative mating by type of relationship. Finally, this paper contributes to the research on assortative mating patterns in Latin America.