Ethnic Outmarriage Rates in Singapore: The Influence of Traditional Socio-Cultural Organization* RIAZ HASSAN AND GEOFFREY BENJAMIN Department of Sociology, University of Singapore Variations in interethnic marriage rates in Singapore demonstrate that the influence of ethnicity and religion on family organization is far stronger than the influence of class or education. In particular the striking variations in the proportions of men and women marrying out of each of the major ethnic groups in the Republic appear to result from the continuing operation of traditional ideals of family and local-group organization in a contemporary situation that is otherwise rapidly changing. A recent study of ethnic intermarriage in Singapore (Hassan, 1971) found that intermar- riage between members of the major ethnic groups takes place far more frequently than previous studies had indicated. In the present follow-up study we report the extent to which members of the various ethnic groups marry out, and attempt to explain the different outmarriage rates of these groups in terms of their socio-cultural characteristics. As in most Southeast Asian countries the population of Singapore is marked by consider- able ethnic heterogeneity. Table 1 summarizes the ethnic constitution of Singapore in 1967 and demonstrates that though the sex ratio for the population as a whole is about normal, the Indian-Pakistanis, Europeans, and Eurasians show rather unbalanced sex ratios. Outmarriage rates for the different ethnic groups were obtained by examining the records of all marriages registered and solemnized in Singapore between January, 1962, and Decem- ber, 1968. Two sources were used: the Report on the Registration of Births and Deaths, Marriages and Persons published annually by the Singapore Government; and unpublished figures kept by the Department of Statistics, Singapore, which compiles marriage statistics annually from the reports on the registration of marriages furnished by the Registrar of Mar- riages and the Registrar of Muslim Marriages. We omit reference here to the legal and other aspects of marriage in Singapore and to the methods of data collection employed in this study as they have already been described in the earlier paper (Hassan, 1971). Table 2 summarizes the data on interethnic marriages for the period under study, while Tables 3 (a) and 3 (b) provide a breakdown of these data by ethnic group for grooms and brides respectively. In Singapore official figures are usually based on the informants' own declaration of their ethnicity. In cases of doubt the informant is almost always regarded as belonging to his or her father's ethnic group, even in cases where traditional criteria would have regarded the mother's ethnicity as more important. It is thus not possible to produce separate figures relating to the marital behavior of the offspring of mixed marriages. The figures in the table therefore include an unspecifiable proportion of persons of "mixed" ethnicity, but since it is cultural allegiance rather than genetic make-up that concerns us here this slight confusion has no significant effect on our argument. It is important to note that in Singapore "Eurasian" does not count as a "mixed" group: it is regarded simply as one of the Republic's constituent ethnic groups, both informally and officially. The above comments, then, apply as much to Eurasians as they do to, say, Chinese. Nowadays the child of a Chinese father and European mother would in most cases be treated as Chinese for census purposes, and the child of a European father and an Indian mother as a European. However, it remains possible for the child of a Malay mother and a European father to become a Malay by entering the Muslim religion. In general, polygamy is too rare in Singapore *The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance and cooperation of The Department of Statistics, Singapore, in the collection of data for this paper. Thanks are also due to Dr. R. Suntharalingam and Miss Linbert Chiu for relevant information, and to Profes- sor Hans-Dieter Evers for his comments on an earlier draft of the paper. The authors are solely responsible for the presentation and interpretation of the data in this paper. November 1973 JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY 731 This content downloaded from 182.55.174.156 on Sat, 24 Mar 2018 06:44:31 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms