New Marriages, New Families: U.S. Racial and Hispanic Intermarriage

Socioeconomic Characteristics

Family socioeconomic resources can have significant effects on children's opportunities, especially in education. Whether they are in endogamous or inter-Hispanic marriages, Hispanic mothers and fathers living with children under age 19 are younger than non-Hispanic parents living with children under age 19 (see Table 7), reflecting the younger age distribution of the Hispanic than the non-Hispanic population. But parents in inter-Hispanic families have nearly the same educational level as parents in non-Hispanic families, and much higher educational levels than parents in endogamous Hispanic families. In 2000, inter-Hispanic children's fathers averaged 13.3 years of education, while non-Hispanic children's fathers averaged 13.8 years; fathers in endogamous Hispanic families had completed barely 10 years of education, on average.

The pattern was similar for family income in married-couple families with children at home. Inter-Hispanic mean family income was 92 percent that of non-Hispanic families for 1999, while Hispanic families had average incomes less than 60 percent of the mean for non-Hispanic families.

Inter-Hispanic children fared better than children in families with two Hispanic parents with regard to parents' education and income. Both are important indicators of child wellbeing. Children in inter-Hispanic families were no different from non-Hispanic children with regard to parents' education and income. These findings are consistent with higher intermarriage among better-educated and U.S.-born Hispanics, two characteristics generally associated with higher socioeconomic status.

Implications of Intermarriage

Trends in racial and Hispanic intermarriage affect American society in many ways. The demographic effects of intermarriage- such as changing racial and ethnic composition of the population-are fairly evident and can be studied using demographic data and methods. Social effects are more complex and subtle. It is difficult to study how Americans will think about race in the future when more and more Americans are multiracial, or as more people who identify as Hispanic also have non-Hispanic origins. The growing numbers of multiracial and multiethnic Americans will also fuel the debate over how best to count the population by race and Hispanic status. In this concluding section, we discuss some implications of racial and Hispanic intermarriage for U.S. demographic and social change.

Race, Ethnicity, and Population Trends

Intermarriage has a major influence on future racial and Hispanic population trends. Throughout its history, the nation's ethnic and racial composition has changed with varying sources of new immigrants as well as with the different fertility and mortality rates of U.S.-born residents and new immigrants. The large white population dominated U.S. population for most of the country's history, although historically there has been a significant minority of blacks and other smaller groups such as American Indians. The past 40 years have witnessed a revival of high levels of immigration and a massive shift in the countries of origin of immigrants. Today's immigrants are predominantly Hispanic, Asian, and Caribbean, rather than the overwhelmingly European immigrants of earlier years.