TY - JOUR AU - Duncan, Brian AU - Trejo, Stephen J TI - Ethnic Identification, Intermarriage, and Unmeasured Progress by Mexican Americans JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 11423 PY - 2005 Y2 - June 2005 DO - 10.3386/w11423 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11423 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11423.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Brian Duncan Department of Economics University of Colorado Denver Campus Box 181 P.O. Box 173364 Denver, CO 80217-3364 E-Mail: brian.duncan@ucdenver.edu Stephen J. Trejo Department of Economics University of Texas at Austin 2225 Speedway Stop C3100 Austin, TX 78712 Tel: 512/475-8512 Fax: 512/471-3510 E-Mail: trejo@austin.utexas.edu M1 - published as Brian Duncan, Stephen J. Trejo. "Ethnic Identification, Intermarriage, and Unmeasured Progress by Mexican Americans ," in George J. Borjas, editor, "Mexican Immigration to the United States" University of Chicago Press (2007) AB - Using Census and CPS data, we show that U.S.-born Mexican Americans who marry non-Mexicans are substantially more educated and English proficient, on average, than are Mexican Americans who marry co-ethnics (whether they be Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants). In addition, the non-Mexican spouses of intermarried Mexican Americans possess relatively high levels of schooling and English proficiency, compared to the spouses of endogamously married Mexican Americans. The human capital selectivity of Mexican intermarriage generates corresponding differences in the employment and earnings of Mexican Americans and their spouses. Moreover, the children of intermarried Mexican Americans are much less likely to be identified as Mexican than are the children of endogamous Mexican marriages. These forces combine to produce strong negative correlations between the education, English proficiency, employment, and earnings of Mexican-American parents and the chances that their children retain a Mexican ethnicity. Such findings raise the possibility that selective ethnic %u201Cattrition%u201D might bias observed measures of intergenerational progress for Mexican Americans. ER -