Intermarriage, Selection and the Economic Assimilation of Native Americans : Evidence from Historical Panel Data

While intermarriage with non-indigenous people has been identified as a significant predictor of the economic assimilation of Native people, the explanation for this effect is less understood. In this paper, I examine whether the economic assimilation from marrying a Native person with white ancestry is driven by productivity advantages or by selection into intermarriage. The data come from panel data on farm households on the Eastern Cherokee Reservation from 1894 to 1906 linked to information on the racial ancestry of each household head contained in the Eastern Cherokee applications to the U.S. Court of Claims. I estimate an endogenous switching model and find evidence of positive selection into marriages with males with white ancestry. After accounting for selection, I find no evidence of an intermarriage premium. These findings are additionally supported by the results from sibling-fixed effects models