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New Marriages, New Families: U.S. Racial and Hispanic Intermarriage
Population Bulletin, Jun 2005 by Lee, Sharon M, Edmonston, Barry
Where Do Interracial Families Live?
The geographic distribution of interracial families closely mirrors that of interracial couples (as shown in Figures 6 and 7, page 18). About twothirds of children living in interracial families reside in either the West or the South. States with relatively high proportions of interracial couples also tend to have high proportions of children living in interracial families. More than 10 percent of all children are in interracial families in Hawaii, Oklahoma, Alaska, California, and New Mexico. Hawaii, which has a history of high intermarriage rates among its large Asian and Hawaiian populations, is particularly striking; almost one-third of the state's children lived with intermarried parents in 2000.
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About one-fourth of all children in interracial families reside in California; another fourth live in five other states: Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, and Arizona.
Socioeconomic Characteristics
The parents of children living in interracial families tend to be younger than parents in same-race couples, highlighting how recent and sharp the increase in interracial marriage has been (see Table 5). Overall, interracially married parents have slightly less education than endogamous parents: 13.0 years compared with 13.2 years for fathers, and 12.8 years compared with 13.1 years for mothers. But minority-race parents in interracialcouple families are more educated than similar minority-race parents in endogamous-couple families. Fathers in white/American Indian-couple families have an average 12.8 years of education, for example, while fathers in endogamous American Indian couple families have an average education of 11.6 years. Even among Asians, who have high average education, parents in interracial-couple families have higher educational levels than Asian parents in endogamous-couple families. Mothers in white/Asian families have an average of 14.2 years of education, compared with 13.1 years of education for mothers in endogamous Asian families.
The higher educational levels among minorities in interracial marriages are consistent with the younger ages of intermarried people-younger cohorts have higher educational attainment-and with the recency of the increase in intermarriage. But the higher education levels for intermarried minorities also reflect a generally positive relationship between education and intermarriage (as shown in Figure 4, page 16).
Parents' education is important for children. Children of more highly educated parents are more likely to attain higher levels of schooling themselves.43 And more years of education are consistently associated with better jobs and higher incomes: 2000 Census data for American adults show that the 1999 median earnings for full-time workers who had bachelor's degrees was $42,900, compared with $27,400 for high school graduates and $21,300 for those with less than a high school education. Individuals with advanced degrees had median earnings of $55,200.44
Lower Average Incomes
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