Skin Color Homogamy in Mexico

Erika Arenas, University of California, Los Angeles

In this paper, I will expand understandings of assortative mating by race by investigating skin color homogamy in Mexico. I will use a novel dataset from the Mexican Marital Preference Pilot project (MxMPP) that will allow me to assess for the first time the role of skin color homogamy in this country. The MxMPP survey instrument includes two measures of skin color. First, respondents were asked to rate the skin color of their spouses according to a skin color palette. After the interview was over, interviewers rated the skin color of the respondent according to the same palette. The colors of the palette come from the New Immigrant Survey (NIS) skin color scale (Massey and Martin 2003). I will investigate skin color homogamy using log-linear models to describe the association between partners’ characteristics.