Social mobility, assortative marriage and their interrelationships with marital distance and age in Oxford City

SummaryExchanges between the social classes by social mobility and marriage in Oxford in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the relation between this social movement and geographical marital distance and marital age are analysed. The data were obtained from the marriage registers of nine contiguous ecclesiastical parishes which transect the city. There have been wide channels for social flow enabling rapid development of relatedness and genetic similarity between the classes. Whether or not this has occurred, however, depends upon the randomness of the social movement with respect to ancestry and genotype. Exchanges are greater through social mobility than through marriage, and differ little between the 19th and 20th centuries. Marital distance and marital age of the groom are determined by his social class, and independently by the class of his father and of the bride's father. These effects, however, appear to be essentially additive and there is no evidence that the socially mobile, or those who marry ou...