Episode 102: Giulia Tura on the Effect of Legal Status and Cultural Distance on Marriages Between Natives and Migrants

Giulia Tura is an Assistant Professor of Economics at LUISS University and a Foscolo Europe Research Fellow.

The paper discussed in this episode is this one.

Immigrants marry natives at a lower rate than they marry other immigrants (i.e. the intermarriage gap). This paper studies the role of legal status incentives in explaining marriage choices between natives and migrants. When immigrants gain access to legal status, their probability of marrying natives decreases significantly, and existing marriages between immigrants and natives become less stable. The paper shows that legal status considerations explain a substantial portion of immigrants' marriage patterns, as access to legal status reduces the instrumental need to marry a native to obtain residency rights.

Other articles discussed in this episode are:

Becker, G. S. (1973). A theory of marriage: Part I. Journal of Political Economy, 81(4), 813-846.

Choo, E., & Siow, A. (2006). Who marries whom and why. Journal of Political Economy, 114(1), 175-201.