Socioeconomic and cultural incorporation and marital disruption among Mexican Americans

This article examines how processes of socioeconomic and cultural incorporation affect marital-disruption patterns among Mexican-origin persons in the U.S. in comparison to non-Hispanic whites and African Americans. The results, which are based mainly on recent National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, indicate that, once other variables are controlled, the correlation of level of education with marital disruption among U.S. native Mexican Americans is negative and similar in level to that of non-Hispanic whites. However, the correlation of educational level with marital disruption among Mexican immigrants is both positive and lower than that of other groups. It is argued that these results do not support the idea that cultural familism explains Mexican-origin marital-disruption patterns, nor the idea that segmented assimilation processes exert influence on marital disruption, but rather the idea that socioeconomic and cultural incorporation interact in their effects on marital variables.