Tilburg University
Intermarriage and the risk of divorce in the Netherlands
Kalmijn, Matthijs; de Graaf, P.M.; Janssen, J.
Published in:
Population Studies: A Journal of Demography
Publication date:
2005
Link to publication in Tilburg University Research Portal
Citation for published version (APA):
Kalmijn, M., de Graaf, P. M., & Janssen, J. (2005). Intermarriage and the risk of divorce in the Netherlands: The
effects of differences in religion and in nationality, 1974-94.
Population Studies: A Journal of Demography
,
59
(1),
71-85.
General rights
Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners
and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.
• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.
• You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain
• You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal
Take down policy
If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately
and investigate your claim.
Download date: 10. aug.. 2022
This article was downloaded by:[Ingenta Content Distribution]
On: 22 October 2007
Access Details: [subscription number 768420433]
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954
Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Population Studies
A Journal of Demography
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713689546
Intermarriage and the risk of divorce in the Netherlands:
The effects of differences in religion and in nationality,
1974-94
Matthijs Kalmijn
a
; Paul M. de Graaf
b
; Jacques P. G. Janssen
c
a
Tilburg University,
b
Radboud University Nijmegen,
c
Medtronic Bakken Research Center,
Online Publication Date: 01 March 2005
To cite this Article: Kalmijn, Matthijs, de Graaf, Paul M. and Janssen, Jacques P. G.
(2005) 'Intermarriage and the risk of divorce in the Netherlands: The effects of
differences in religion and in nationality, 1974-94', Population Studies, 59:1, 71 - 85
To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/0032472052000332719
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0032472052000332719
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
This article maybe used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction,
re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly
forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be
complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be
independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,
demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or
arising out of the use of this material.
Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution] At: 13:16 22 October 2007
Intermarriage and the risk of divorce in the
Netherlands: The effects of differences in religion and
in nationality, 1974
/94
Matthijs Kalmijn
1
, Paul M. de Graaf
2
and Jacques P. G. Janssen
3
1
Tilburg University,
2
Radboud University Nijmegen,
3
Medtronic Bakken Research Center
A textbook hypothesis about divorce is that heterogamous marriages are more likely to end in divorce
than homogamous marriages. We analyse vital statistics on the population of the Netherlands,
which provide a unique and powerful opportunity to test this hypothesis. All marriages formed
between 1974 and 1984 (nearly 1 million marriages) are traced in the divorce records and multivariate
logistic regression models are used to analyse the effects on divorce of heterogamy in religion and national
origin. Our analyses confirm the hypothesis for marriages that cross the Protestant
/Catholic or the
Jewish
/Gentile boundary. Heterogamy effects are weaker for marriages involving Protestants or
unaffiliated persons. Marriages between Dutch and other nationalities have a higher risk of divorce, the
more so the greater the cultural differences between the two groups. Overall, the evidence supports
the view that, in the Netherlands, new group boundaries are more difficult to cross than old group
boundaries.
Keywords: divorce; ethnicity; heterogamy; intermarriage; marriage; nationality; religion
[Submitted September 2003; Final version accepted September 2004]
Introduction
A classic hypothesis about divorce is that when
husband and wife have dissimilar characteristics,
their marriage is more likely to end in divorce.
One reason to expect this relationship is that
differences in religion, ethnicity, and other social
characteristics, are correlated with differences in
tastes, values, and communication styles (Kalmijn
1998). Such differences make it more difficult for
spouses to understand each other, reduce the
number of activities they enjoy doing together,
and limit the degree to which they can confirm
each other’s values and world-views. A second
reason to expect divorce to be more likely is that
marrying someone with different characteristics
implies crossing a social boundary in society.
Because marrying outside the group is often norma-
tively disapproved of, mixed marriages may receive
less support from the social networks of the respec-
tive spouses than other marriages. Although lack
of social support does not necessarily make a
marriage unstable or unhappy, support or disap-
proval from friends and family members probably
does make a difference when the relationship is
troubled.
The notion that heterogamy increases the prob-
ability of the marriage ending in divorce is a ‘text-
book hypothesis’ in the social sciences and is widely
believed to be true in the general public (Glenn et
al. 1974). Several designs have been used to test the
hypothesis. The oldest studies relied on vital statis-
tics and matched divorce records to marriage
records (Monahan and Kephart 1954; Burchinal
and Chancellor 1963). Using information about
brides and grooms that is included on the marriage
record, these studies were able to assess whether
mixed marriages had a higher risk of divorce than
other marriages. Later studies relied on cross-
sectional survey data and used measures of per-
ceived marital stability or marital satisfaction as a
dependent variable (Heaton 1984; Shehan et al.
1990). The most recent studies used prospectiveor
retrospective longitudinal survey data and applied
regression models to compare the probability of
divorce for heterogamous and homogamous couples
Population Studies, Vol. 59, No. 1, 2005, pp. 71
/85
ISSN 0032-4728 print/ISSN 1477-4747 online/05/010071-15 # 2005 Population Investigation Committee
DOI: 10.1080/0032472052000332719
Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution] At: 13:16 22 October 2007
(Schwertfeger 1982; Lehrer and Chiswick 1993;
Jones 1996).
What does the evidence show to date? The
heterogamy hypothesis has been studied for a range
of characteristics, including education (Tynes 1990),
social class (Glenn et al. 1974; Jalovaara 2003),
religion, and ethnicity. Our focus is on religion and
ethnicity and we therefore limit our overview to
these two. Studies using actual divorce risks as the
outcome generally find support for the hypothesis,
although most of the studies are now rather old
(Bumpass and Sweet 1972; Becker et al. 1977;
Michael 1979; Lehrer 1996; Bru¨ derl and Engelhardt
1997). An important recent study comes from the
USA (Lehrer and Chiswick 1993). Using a retro-
spective survey with detailed information on de-
nominations, Lehrer and Chiswick show, among
other things, that a marriage between a Catholic
and a Protestant has a higher divorce risk than that
of a marriage between two Catholics or between two
Protestants. In addition, a marriage between mem-
bers of different Protestant denominations also has a
higher divorce risk.
An important recent study of the ethnic dimen-
sion of the heterogamy hypothesis has been con-
ducted in Hawaii (Jones 1996). In this analysis, Jones
analyses two Asian ethnic groups and shows that
there are large differences between these groups in
the risk of divorce. However, in ethnically mixed
marriages, the risk of divorce was in between the risk
for the two types of homogamous marriage between
similar individuals in the same ethnic group. Jones
interprets this as a convergence between groups
rather than a heterogamy effect (Jones 1996). A
recent European study focusing on linguistic hetero-
gamy finds that marriages between a Swedish-
speaking and a Finnish-speaking person havea
divorce risk that is a little above the highest level
of the two language groups, and concludes in favour
of the heterogamy hypothesis (Finna¨s 1997).
In sum, the evidence that religious and ethnic
heterogamy affects the risk of divorce is moderately
positive. The evidence accumulated in the USA is
substantial, at least for religious intermarriage. Little
is known about the relationship in European coun-
tries because less research has been done on the
issue in these countries. In this paper, we present an
examination of the effect on divorce of heterogamy
in religion or nationality, by analysing vital statistics
for the Netherlands. By matching marriage records
and divorce records from the population registers of
all Dutch municipalities, we are able to assess
whether heterogamous marriages are more likely
than homogamous marriages to end in divorce. An
obvious drawback of these data is that the number of
characteristics on the marriage record is limited; the
individual characteristics in our data are religion,
nationality, age, and previous marital status. Despite
this drawback, we believe that vital statistics provide
a powerful opportunity to test the heterogamy
hypothesis. The data cover the entire population of
marriages in a given period rather than a sample of
marriages and the number of marriages we are able
to analyse is therefore quite large (nearly 1 million).
Another advantage of our data is that they are
prospective rather that retrospective. Hence, our
measures of religiosity will not be coloured by recall
bias. In sum, in this paper, we restore one of the
older methods for evaluating the heterogamy effect,
a method we believe was abandoned too soon.
The case of the Netherlands is a particularly
interesting one because of its tradition of pillariza-
tion (the segmentation of Dutch society into four
dominant interest groups based on religion or
ideology and class) that has made the social, institu-
tional, and geographical boundaries between reli-
gious groups quite strong. The period of pillarization
was strongest in the first half of the twentieth
century but the period since the 1950s has been
characterized by rapid secularization. Church mem-
bership declined for all groups except for the most
orthodox Protestant groups, church attendance
among church members declined, traditional reli-
gious beliefs became less common, and religious
intermarriage increased (Hendrickx et al. 1991;
Becker and Vink 1994; Felling et al. 2000). In
comparison with the USA or with Southern Europe,
the Netherlands is now relatively secular and it has
experienced stronger trends in this respect than
other countries (Halman and Riis 1999; Stark
1999). The religious groups we consider in our
work are: (i) Catholics, (ii) ‘Dutch Reformed
Protestants’ (referred to as Reformed ), (iii) ‘Re-
Reformed Protestants’ (referred to as Orthodox),
(iv) Jews, and (v) Unaffiliated persons. These
represent the largest groups in the Netherlands
(with the exception of Jews, who form a very small
group).
The role of nationality in the Netherlands is
different from that in traditional immigrant societies.
The most important immigrant groups in the Nether-
lands are the Moroccans and the Turks. Both these
groups were initially recruited as labour immigrants
during the 1960s and 1970s, and both have since then
grown in size, partly through family reunification in
the 1980s and partly through the marrying of spouses
from abroad in the 1990s. The two groups are
nonetheless small, constituting about 4 per cent of
72 Matthijs Kalmijn et al.
Downloaded By: [Ingenta Content Distribution] At: 13:16 22 October 2007
the population. Levels of intermarriage remain very
low and many Turks and Moroccans marry a spouse
from abroad (Esveldt and Schoorl 1998; Harmsen
1998; Van Huis and Steenhof 2003). The ethnic
groups we consider in our analyses are: (a) Mor-
occan, (b) Turkish, (c) Western European, (d)
Southern European, and (e) Dutch. We use nation-
ality to measure ethnicity but, recognizing that
nationality is a narrow definition of ethnicity, we
use the term ‘nationality intermarriage’ rather than
‘ethnic intermarriage’ to refer to marriages between
partners of different national origin.
We analyse religion and nationality in one study
because they represent old and new bases for group
identification and group solidarity in society. Owing
to secularization on the one hand, and increasing
immigration on the other, we suspect that in
contemporary times religious boundaries are less
salient than ethnic boundaries. As a consequence,
we also believe that intermarriage across religious
boundaries will have a weaker impact on divorce
than intermarriage across nationality boundaries.
Theoretical background and hypotheses
The general hypothesis we test is that marriages
between individuals who differ in religion or nation-
ality have a higher risk of divorce than homogamous
marriages. The underlying reasoning is that differ-
ences in these characteristics will make it more
difficult for partners to understand each other, will
make it more difficult for them to make joint
decisions (e.g., about childbearing and upbringing),
and will lead to more disapproval from their
immediate social world. In further specifying this
hypothesis, we need to take into account the fact
that religious groups and nationalities also have
different risks of divorce. More orthodox religious
groups tend to have a lower risk of divorce than
more liberal groups and the unaffiliated generally
have more unstable marriages than the various
religious groups (Lehrer and Chiswick 1993; Booth
et al. 1995; Wagner and Weiss 2003; Kalmijn et al.
2004). Similarly, there may be differences among
nationality groups in the risk of divorce, depending,
for example, on the value orientation of the sending
country (Jones 1996).
We therefore introduce two hypotheses. The first
hypothesis is the main-effects hypothesis, which
argues that the more traditional the value orienta-
tion of a religious or national origin group, the lower
the risk of divorce. In the Netherlands, the Orthodox
Protestants are the most traditional, the Unaffiliated
are the most liberal, and the Reformed Protestants
and Catholics are in between these extremes (Felling
et al. 2000). The position of Jews in the list is more
difficult to determine but is probably somewhere at
the more liberal end of the continuum (Van Solinge
and De Vries 2001). Using data from the World
Values Studies and from immigrant surveys in the
Netherlands, we expect that Moroccan and Turkish
persons are more traditional, that Western Eur-
opean and Dutch persons are the most liberal, and
that Southern Europeans are in between (Inglehart
1997; Uunk 2003).
Our second hypothesis concerns the effect of the
spouses’ religion and national origin, and argues that
when the religions or national origins of the two
spouses are dissimilar, the risk of divorce is higher.
We call this the heterogamy hypothesis. Assuming
that the main-effects hypothesis is valid, we need to
decide what constitutes evidence for the heterogamy
hypothesis. If the divorce risk of a mixed marriage
(between, say, a member of group A and a member
of group B) is higher than the divorce risk of AA
marriages but lower than the divorce risk of BB
marriages, we argue that adaptation is taking place.
The behaviour of those couples is in between the two
groups, and one can argue that this is simply the
average of the two group effects and not a hetero-
gamy effect (Jones 1996). To analyse real hetero-
gamy effects, we employ both a strong and a weak
form of the heterogamy hypothesis. According to
the strong heterogamy hypothesis, AB marriages will
haveadivorce risk that is higher than the maximum
divorce risk of AA and BB marriages. For example,
we expect that a marriage between a Catholic and an
unaffiliated person will haveadivorce risk that is
higher than the (already) high risk for unaffiliated
couples. According to the weak heterogamy hypoth-
esis, AB marriages will haveadivorce risk that is
higher than the average risk of AA and BB
marriages. In our example, the risk of the mixed
group will be higher than the average of the low risk
for Catholics and the high risk for unaffiliated
couples.
There are different types of heterogamous mar-
riages and this allows us to formulate two additional
hypotheses (cf., Lehrer and Chiswick 1993). One of
these is that the more dissimilar are two groups in
their value orientation, the higher the risk of
divorce. This implies that the highest risk of divorce
will be observed for mixed marriages when one
partner is Orthodox and the other unaffiliated. The
lowest risk will be observed for a marriage in which
one partner is Catholic and the other Reformed. The
other mixed marriages will be in between these two
Intermarriage and the risk of divorce 73
