Ethnically mixed families in the Russian Federation

Abstract

The paper is devoted to an analysis of ethnically mixed married couples in which both the wife and husband consider themselves as belonging to different ethnicities. Unlike other studies of the ethnic structure of the population, which usually analyze the list of peoples and ethnicities in Russia, their size, peculiarities and factors of dynamics, the present study stresses those kinds of demographic behavior – primarily matrimonial behavior - the results of which may be considered, with certain reservations, as processes occurring at the ethnic boundaries. The main source of data used is quite a new one. It appeared recently after the Federal State Statistics Service made the 2002 and 2010 All-Russian population censuses results open access. These microdata are supplied with tools for creating, by user request, demographic tables of characteristics of individuals, families or households using census data.The results are presented of the study's findings on the prevalence of ethnically mixed families in Russia for 27 ethnicities depending on gender, place of birth and level of education, as well as of an analysis of the changes observed between the last censuses.