Residential mixing helps people marry across class, but not across race

It turns out that growing up near people from different income levels makes you more likely to marry someone from a different income level. But growing up near people of a different race does not make you more likely to marry across racial lines. This means that policies designed to mix neighborhoods might help people marry across class, but they won't do the same for race.

For decades, many people assumed that if you just got different groups to live near each other, they would mix. This paper shows that works for income levels, but not for race. It means that policies trying to get people to marry across racial lines will need to do more than just change who lives next door.