Education and ethnic intermarriage: evidence from higher education expansion in Indonesia

We analyse the effect of educational attainments on interethnic marriages in Indonesia, a multi-ethnic emerging country. The empirical analysis is based on data from the Java Island obtained from the 2014 wave of the Indonesian Family Life Survey, combined with administrative data about the location and year of establishment of Higher Education Institutions (HEI). To estimate causal effects, we exploit variation in exposure to HEI by birth year and district of residence in an IV/TSLS framework. Specifically, we employ as instrument for education the number of HEI located in a radius of 10 km from the centroid of the district of residence at age 18. The analysis is carried separately for males and females. The results indicate that years of schooling, college attendance and completion positively affect the likelihood of exogamy, i.e. having a partner from a different ethnicity. The estimates are somewhat larger for females than for males (although not statistically different), and all the robustness checks provide stable results, supporting their causal interpretation. The effect of schooling is not heterogeneous depending on parental education or mixed parental ethnicity. However, it is lower for individuals with Javanese ethnicity compared to those belonging to other ethnic groups. We also analyse potential mechanisms, highlighting that migration/residential location and changes in social norms could be significant channels underlying the causal chain between higher education expansion, educational attainments, and interethnic marriages. Overall, the results point out that the increase in educational attainments induced by the expansion of higher education could contribute to the reduction of ethnic segregation.