Elizabeth Aura McClintock

PhD Candidate
Department of Sociology
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305

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When does race matter? Race, sex, and dating at an elite university

This paper unites quantitative and qualitative data from the College Social Life Survey (n = 732) to describe and explain patterns of racial homophily in undergraduate sexual/romantic relationships at an elite university, a closed social setting. It expands the literature on interracial romantic unions by comparing homophily in hookups (uncommitted sexual interactions), dates, and long-term relationships. Although this population embodies many characteristics associated with greater racial mixing (youth, education, status equality, geographical proximity, racial diversity, independence from family), racial homophily is still strongly evident. Variation in levels of homophily among relationship types and among racial groups is explained by differences in desired homophily, social network segregation, and participation in formal race-based student organizations. Black students are particularly socially isolated.

The Gendered double standard of aging in marriage markets

We argue that men, more than women, evaluate potential spouses on the basis of beauty, and that the standard of beauty favors young women. If this is true, we would expect that the older men are when they marry, the more they find women their own age unattractive relative to younger women. Thus older men will have a stronger preference than younger men to marry a woman substantially younger than themselves. But this creates substantial competition for young women (who are sought by both young and old men), suggesting that more affluent men would be better able to marry down in age if they marry at ages when men's preference to do so is especially strong. We test these ideas using CPS data as well as vital statistics collected on brides and grooms in most U.S. states between 1970 and 1988. We find that the older men are when they marry, the more years they marry down, whether it is a first or higher-order marriage. While men with more education are slightly more likely to marry down in age when marrying past 40, the pattern of men marrying down more if they marry later holds strongly for all education groups.

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