RELATION BETWEEN INTERMARRIAGE AND LENGTH OF RESIDENCE 125 
THE RELATION BETWEEN INTERMARRIAGE, LENGTH OF RESIDENCE, 
SURPLUS MALES AND SIZE OF ORIGIN GROUPS 
The aim hitherto has been to examine the extent of intermarriage in the Registration 
Area in ‘Canada. The experience of the 150,000 fathers and mothers has been taken as 
typical of all married men and women, The extent to which the various origins and groups 
of origins had intermarried up to 1921 has been noted; and particular attention was paid 
to the amount of assimilation by marriage which bad taken place with the British- and 
French stocks in Canada. It was found that the different stocks varied greatly in respect 
to the progress of this process of fusion, and an attempt will now be made to determine how 
far those differences were due to causes associated with the origins, and how far to extraneous 
causes such as length of residence, sex distribution and actual magnitude of the origin 
groups in Canada. 
Such factors are of great importance in explaining the proportions of exogamous 
marriages. The mere fact of recent arrival may have precluded the possibility of inter- 
marriage, and certain peoples which show small percentages intermarrying may not be averse 
to mixing with other stocks but may merely have lacked opportunity. Other things being 
equal, the longer a group has been resident in Canada or the United States, the larger will 
tend to be the percentage of intermarriage. Again, the larger the surplus of males of 
marriageable age in a given group, the greater will be the proportion who will have to find 
partners in other stocks if they intend to marry. Further, the larger the percentage a given 
group constitutes of the total population, the greater is the chance of that group being self- 
contained in respect to marriage. This may be stated conversely and made clearer by a 
concrete illustration such as the following: The mathematical probability of a German taking 
a German wife is greater if there are fifty German women in every one hundred women of 
the population than if there are only five or ten. Such factors are more or less independent 
of the characteristics of particular stocks, and we will now proceed to determine how far 
they account for the differences which appear. 
Length of Residence—The first problem is to secure a satisfactory ipdex of length of 
residence. In Chapter IIT the percentages of Canadian and United States born in the several 
stocks were used in discussing this question. For rough comparisons they served fairly 
well, but while long residence is probably the most important cause of the high percentage 
North American born, it should be kept in mind that other factors are involved. First, 
birth rate: a stock with a high birth rate will show a higher percentage Canadian and 
United States born than one with a low birth rate, assuming that other things are equal in 
all respects. Further, a group of immigrants among whom the numbers of the sexes are 
nearly equal will show a higher percentage born in North America after a given period, 
than one with a large surplus of males. A surplus of unmarried males does not reproduce 
itself, while, when the numbers are approximately equal, the implication is that a larger 
percentage of the adult men and women are married and making additions to the numbers 
of their respective origins born on this continent. Finally, in cases where immigration has 
been very recent and in comparatively great volume, the percentage Canadian and United 
States born may be temporarily reduced. Where, on the other hand, immigration has been 
arrested for a few years, a moderately prolific stock may show a high proportion born on 
this continent within a comparatively short time. However, with all these qualifications, 
in most normal cases the longer the people of a particular origin have been resident in 
Canada or the United States, the larger will tend to be the percentage North American 
born. Since it is the best index available for the purpose, we will venture to use it again in 
examining the data on intermarriage. 
It is recalled in passing that large percentages of certain origins, notably Scandinavian, 
have immigrated to Canada from the United States, and because of this and the similarity 
of the cultures in the two countries, the total Canadian and United States born was con- 
sidered more suitable for the purpose of the analysis of Chapter II than the Canadian born 
alone. In so far as the tendency to intermarriage is related to length of residence. residence 
in the United States is the equivalent of residence in Canada.