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Differences with the 1990 NJPS Highlights Report	-Download NJPS Report PDF -Download PowerPoint Summary
Readers familiar with the 1990 NJPS Highlights Report will recall that researchers at the time reported a 52% intermarriage rate for Jews who married during the 1985-90 time period, which is obviously higher than the 43% rate reported with NJPS 2000-01 data.

The discrepancy can be explained by the definition 1990 NJPS researchers employed to calculate intermarriage rates. They calculated and presented an intermarriage rate for "born Jews," a category that included those they considered Jewish at the time of the survey and some they considered non-Jewish, including non-Jews who had been born to at least one Jewish parent and were raised in a non-Jewish religion. Their rationale was to throw as wide a net as possible in calculating the intermarriage rate, in contrast to the narrower definition of Jews they employed for other analyses in their report.

Applying a parallel definition of "born Jews" to the NJPS 2000-01 data, the intermarriage rate among those who married in 1985-90 is also 52%. In other words, by employing essentially the same expansive definition of "born Jews" used by the 1990 researchers, the intermarriage rates are the same for the 1985-90 time period in both the 1990 and 2000-01 surveys, lending confidence to both studies.

In the current survey, applying the broad "born Jews" definition to people whose marriages began in 1991-95 and since 1996 yields intermarriage rates of 53% and 54%, respectively. Thus, both definitions of Jews lead to a similar substantive conclusion: a significant stabilization of the intermarriage rate since 1985-90.

Next page: Variations in Intermarriage