There’s More to Marriage Than Love: The Effect of Legal Status and Cultural Distance on Intermarriages and Separations
利用欧盟扩大作为自然实验，结合意大利婚姻和离婚行政数据，研究发现获得法律身份使移民与当地人结婚的概率降低60%，并增加此前形成的跨国夫妻的离婚风险。通过结构模型量化法律身份和文化距离的作用，揭示合法化政策可能延缓文化融合。
This paper analyses the marriage decisions of natives and migrants focusing on the role of legal status and cultural distance. We exploit the successive enlargements of the European Union as a natural experiment that granted legal status only to some groups of foreign immigrants. Using Italian administrative data on the universe of marriages and separations, we show that access to legal status reduces by 60 percent the probability of immigrants intermarrying with natives, and it increases by 20 percent the hazard rate of separation for mixed couples formed before legal status acquisition. Building on this evidence, we develop and structurally estimate a multidimensional equilibrium model of marriage and separation, where individuals match on observed and unobserved characteristics. Allowing for trade-offs between cultural distance, legal status, and other socio-economic spousal characteristics, we quantify the role of legal status and the strength of cultural affinity. Through the evaluation of counterfactual policies, we show that granting legal status to migrants to foster their inclusion in the legal labor market paradoxically slows down the integration of minorities along cultural lines. We also show how recent migration waves will foster a gender marital imbalance within those communities.