Intermarriage in Australia: patterns by ancestry, gender and generation

Ancestry data from the 2001 Census allow us to explore intermarriage patterns among people of different ethnic backgrounds in Australia including: people born overseas (the first generation), their Australian-born children (the second generation), and their Australian-born grand children and so on (termed here the third generation plus). While rates of intermarriage vary sharply among the second generation, by the third generation most people are marrying outside their own ancestry groups. For example, second-generation people reporting Greek ancestry are very likely to marry others of a similar ancestry but the third generation are not. Most groups of Asian ancestry have not been in Australia long enough to produce a large third generation of marriageable age, but people reporting Indian and Chinese ancestry show a similar pattern to the Greeks: strong in-marriage in the second generation followed by strong out-marriage in the third-plus generation. Copyright. Monash University and the author/s