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Spatial
Homogamy: Geographical Dimensions of the Partner Market in the Ghana
Alhassan Abdul
Hamid
istechnologies
(Ghana)
The objective of this paper is to identify the importance of spatial
dimensions of the partner market in Ghana. Most research on homogamy has
focused on educational and occupational characteristics of partners. We
focus on spatial homogamy, which suggests that people live together with a
partner who shares their geographical origin.
The paper gives an overview of research that takes the spatial
dimension of the partner market into account. The few studies that discuss
the spatial dimension of the partner market are outdated or based on
historical data. Older studies treat distance as opportunity: people tend
to select partners who live nearby, because they tend to meet more
frequently and thus have a higher probability to form a romantic
relationship. Later, it has been argued that the same happens because
people living in the same region look alike.
In recent studies, the concept of the local marriage market comes up,
indicating abstract markets around meeting places. Our approach is to
develop a spatial interaction model of the partner market, in which
density, distance and other explanatory factors determine the probability
to select a partner from a certain region. With the model, possible
explanations for the existence of spatial barriers in the process of
partner choice are to be revealed, such as compositional effects of the
population, the importance of factors that exhibit a strong spatial
pattern, and the importance of the spatial pattern of institutional
contexts that may increase meeting probabilities.
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