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Variations in Intermarriage	-Download NJPS Report PDF -Download PowerPoint Summary
Among all married Jews today -- including those recently married and those married long ago whose marriages are still intact -- 31% are intermarried. Age, gender, region, secular and Jewish education, the Jewishness of parents and Jewish upbringing are all related to intermarriage (see Table 15).

Intermarriage is more frequent among younger than older adults, consistent with the increasing rate of intermarriage over time. Among those 55 and over, 20% of married adults are currently intermarried. In contrast, intermarriage stands at 37% among those 35-54 and 41% among those younger than 35.

Overall the intermarriage rate among men (33%) is slightly higher than among women (29%), but the gender composition of intermarriage fluctuates with age. Men above the age of 55 are more likely to be intermarried than women. In the 35-54 year age group, equal proportions of men and women are intermarried. The gender gap in intermarriage has widened among those under the age of 35, with men again more likely than women to be intermarried.

On a regional basis, intermarriage is most frequent in the West, where 42% of currently married Jews have a spouse who is not Jewish. The Northeast offers the sharpest contrast, with intermarriage rates of 25% for all currently married Jews. The intermarriage rates in the South and in the Midwest fall between these extremes.

Higher levels of secular education are associated with slightly lower levels of intermarriage. The intermarriage gap between those with a graduate degree and those with a high school education or less is 7%. This relationship may appear counter-intuitive given long-held impressions that higher education is associated with weakening religious commitments and ethnic ties. The contrary findings among Jews may be due to two factors: marriages often occur among people with similar levels of education, and higher education is empirically normative for most Jews. As a result, Jews lacking a higher education encounter a marriage market with fewer Jews, making them more prone to marry non-Jews.

Jewish education while growing up is strongly related to in-marriage later in life. Intermarriage is more common among those who did not receive Jewish education (43%) than among those who received some kind of Jewish schooling (25%). Marriage to a non-Jew is rare among those who attended a Jewish day school or yeshiva, more common among those who attended a part-time program that met more than once a week, and higher still among those who attended one-day-a-week programs. In short, the more intensive the Jewish schooling, the lower the rate of intermarriage, reflecting both the types of people who obtain more intensive Jewish schooling and, quite possibly, the direct impact of Jewish education on later marital decisions.

Finally, intermarriage among current Jewish adults is associated both with intermarriage among their parents and with their Jewish upbringing. Slightly more than a fifth of Jewish adults who were raised by two Jewish parents are intermarried. In contrast, nearly three-quarters of Jewish adults with just one Jewish parent are intermarried. In other words, Jewish adults who are the children of intermarriages are more than three times as likely to be married to non-Jews themselves. At the same time, among those who had intermarried parents, a Jewish upbringing reduces the rate of intermarriage. Almost 60% of Jewish adults who were raised Jewish by intermarried parents are themselves intermarried, compared to 86% of their counterparts who had intermarried parents but were not raised Jewish by them.

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