Explaining inter-ethnic and inter-religious marriage in Sub-Saharan Africa

Inter-cultural marriages have long been of great interest to social scientists who wish to examine how ethnic, religious, racial and other identities form and change over time. However, the vast majority of this research has been concentrated in developed countries. As such we undertake the first major examination into the causes and correlates of inter-ethnic and inter-religious marriage in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa. We use Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) couples data in a series of multi-level logit models from up to 36 countries to document a number of findings. First, we show that inter-ethnic marriage rates are high, at 22.3% on average, and rising across Africa over the past 30 years, with rates approaching 50% for recent marriages in Gabon and Zambia and rising rates over time for all countries in our dataset. In contrast, however, we show that inter-religious marriage rates are much lower, at only 5%, and stagnant, with no country average higher than 15% and declining over time in a number of countries. Second, as expected from the literature on inter-cultural marriages in other contexts, we show that modernization variables such as urbanization, literacy/education, wealth and declines in polygamy and agricultural employment are significantly correlated with rising levels of inter-ethnic marriage; in contrast, the relationship between modernization and inter-religious marriage is much more ambiguous. Third, we show that inter-ethnic marriage is significantly correlated with higher age at marriage, being previously married and migration before marriage. Finally, we find no evidence that inter-married couples have fewer children, in contrast to findings elsewhere.