arXiv subjects

Anna Naszodi

Publications and source records attributed to Anna Naszodi.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Studying Ethnic Endogamy in Croatia with a Suitable Indicator of Homophily

In this paper, we study the patterns of ethnic endogamy in Croatia in relation to six ethnic groups between 1970 and 2015. We find that, over the 45-year period analyzed, the segmentation of the Croatian marriage market was weaker between Czechs and non-Czechs, Hungarians and non-Hungarians, Italians and non-Italians, and Slovaks and non-Slovaks than between Serbs and non-Serbs or Croats and non-Croats. This finding is substantiated by survey evidence revealing similar patterns on relative social distances between different ethnic groups in Croatia and Serbia. From a methodological perspective, we show that a plausible ranking of the degree of segmentation of the Croatian marriage market along ethnic lines can be obtained only when marital sorting is characterized by a carefully selected indicator. While a recently reinvented indicator captures sensible patterns of ethnic endogamy, the commonly applied odds-ratio fails to produce results consistent with survey evidence. AI generated video summary of the paper: https://idil.li/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/A_Tale_of_Two_Numbers2.mp4

econ.GN↗

arXiv2025

What do surveys say about the trend in inequality and the applicability of two table-transformation methods?

We apply a pseudo panel analysis of survey data from the years 2010 and 2017 about Americans' self-reported marital preferences and perform some formal tests on the sign and magnitude of the change in educational homophily from the generation of the early Boomers to the late Boomers, as well as from the early GenerationX to the late GenerationX. In the analysis, we control for changes in preferences over the course of the survey respondents' lives. We use the test results to decide whether the popular iterative proportional fitting (IPF) algorithm, or its alternative, the NM-method is more suitable for analyzing revealed marital preferences. These two methods construct different tables representing counterfactual joint educational distributions of couples. Thereby, they disagree on the trend of revealed preferences identified from the prevalence of homogamy by counterfactual decompositions. By finding self-reported homophily to display a U-shaped pattern, our tests reject the hypothesis that the IPF is suitable for constructing counterfactuals in general, while we cannot reject the applicability of the NM. The significance of our survey-based method-selection is due to the fact that the choice between the IPF and the NM makes a difference not only to the identified historical trend of revealed homophily, but also to what future paths of social inequality are believed to be possible.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2024

Historical trend in educational homophily: U-shaped or not U-shaped? Or, how to set a criterion to choose a criterion?

Measuring changes in overall inequality between different educational groups is often performed by quantifying variations in educational marital homophily across consecutive generations. However, this task becomes challenging when the education level of marriageable individuals is generation-specific. To address this challenge, various indicators have been proposed in the assortative mating literature. In this paper, we review a set of criteria that indicators must satisfy to be considered as suitable measures of homophily and inequality. Our analytical criteria include robustness to the number of educational categories distinguished and the negative association between intergenerational mobility and homophily. Additionally, we also impose an empirical criterion on the identified qualitative historical trend in homophily between 1960 and 2010 in the US at the national and sub-national levels. Our analysis reveals that while a specific cardinal indicator meets all three criteria, many commonly applied indices do not. We propose the application of this well-performing indicator to quantify the trend in overall inequality in any country, including European countries, with available population data on couples' education level.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2023

Are high school degrees and university diplomas equally heritable in the US? A new measure of relative intergenerational mobility

This paper proposes a new measure of relative intergenerational mobility along the educational trait as a proxy of inequality of opportunity. The new measure is more suitable for controlling for the variations in the trait distributions of individuals and their parents than the commonly used intergenerational persistence coefficient. This point is illustrated by our empirical analysis of US census data from the period between 1960 and 2015: we show that controlling for the variations in the trait distributions adequately is vital in assessing the part of intergenerational mobility which is not caused by the educational expansion. Failing to do so can potentially reverse the relative priority of various policies aiming at reducing the "heritability" of high school degrees and tertiary education diplomas.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2023

Direct comparison or indirect comparison via a series of counterfactual decompositions?

We illustrate the point with an empirical analysis of assortative mating in the US, namely, that the outcome of comparing two distant groups can be sensitive to whether comparing the groups directly, or indirectly via a series of counterfactual decompositions involving the groups' comparisons to some intermediate groups. We argue that the latter approach is typically more fit for its purpose.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2023

The iterative proportional fitting algorithm and the NM-method: solutions for two different sets of problems

In this paper, we identify two different sets of problems. The first covers the problems that the iterative proportional fitting (IPF) algorithm was developed to solve. These concern completing a population table by using a sample. The other set concerns constructing a counterfactual population table with the purpose of comparing two populations. The IPF is commonly applied by social scientists to solve problems not only in the first set, but also in the second one. We show that while it is legitimate to use the IPF for the first set of problems, it is not the right tool to address the problems of the second kind. We promote an alternative of the IPF, the NM-method, for solving problems in the second set. We provide both theoretical and empirical comparisons of these methods.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2023

A new method for identifying what Cupid's invisible hand is doing. Is it spreading color blindness while turning us more "picky'' about spousal education?

We develop a method suitable for detecting whether racial homophily is on the rise and also whether the economic divide (i.e., the gap between individuals with different education levels and thereby with different abilities to generate income) is growing in a society. We identify these changes with the changing aggregate marital preferences over the partners' race and education level through their effects on the share of inter-racial couples and the share of educationally homogamous couples. These shares are shaped not only by preferences, but also by the distributions of marriageable men and women by traits. The method proposed is designed to control for changes in the trait distributions from one generation to another. By applying the method, we find the economic divide in the US to display a U-curve pattern between 1960 and 2010 followed by its slightly negative trend between 2010 and 2015. The identified trend of racial homophily suggests that the American society has become more and more permissive towards racial intermarriages since 1970. Finally, we refute the aggregate version of the status-cast exchange hypothesis based on the joint dynamics of the economic divide and the racial homophily.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2021

Decomposition scheme matters more than you may think

This paper promotes the application of a path-independent decomposition scheme. Besides presenting some theoretical arguments supporting this decomposition scheme, this study also illustrates the difference between the path-independent decomposition scheme and a popular sequential decomposition with an empirical application of the two schemes. The empirical application is about identifying a directly unobservable phenomenon, i.e. the changing social gap between people from different educational strata, through its effect on marriages and cohabitations. It exploits census data from four waves between 1977 and 2011 about the American, French, Hungarian, Portuguese, and Romanian societies. For some societies and periods, the outcome of the decomposition is found to be highly sensitive to the choice of the decomposition scheme. These examples illustrate the point that a careful selection of the decomposition scheme is crucial for adequately documenting the dynamics of unobservable factors.

econ.GN↗