Explaining inter‐ethnic marriage in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Abstract We use Demographic and Health Survey data to undertake the largest ever examination into the causes of inter‐ethnic marriage in contemporary Sub‐Saharan Africa and document a number of novel findings. First, we show that inter‐ethnic marriage rates are high, at 19.4% on average, vary significantly across countries and are rising over time. Second, we show that individual variables associated with modernization such as urbanization, literacy/education and declines in polygamy and agricultural employment are correlated with inter‐ethnic marriage. Third, we show that inter‐ethnic marriage is quadratically correlated with ethnic group size and negatively correlated with both educational homogamy and country‐population size.