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

In multiracial and multiethnic societies such as the United States, the prevalence of and attitudes toward racial and ethnic intermarriages reveal much about racial and ethnic relations and integration. Children of racially intermarried couples straddle racial boundaries and further challenge the idea of clearly defined racial groups.12

This Population Bulletin covers three aspects of intermarriage in the United States: racial intermarriage, interracial couples, and their children; Hispanic intermarriage, inter-Hispanic couples, and their children; and the implications of racial and Hispanic intermarriage, family formation, and racial identification for future demographic and social trends.13 This report is based on analyses of data from the 1970 to 2000 censuses (see Box 2, page 6). The 1970 Census was the first census conducted following the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned remaining state antimiscegenation laws,14 while the 2000 Census was the first to allow Americans to report more than one race. Racial and Hispanic identity are based on answers to census questions on race and Hispanic origin from the 1970 to 2000 censuses (see Box 3, page 8).

This Population Bulletin finds that:

* Racial intermarriage has increased from less than 1 percent of all married couples in 1970 to more than 5 percent of couples in 2000.

* The typical interracial couple is a white person with a nonwhite spouse. Intermarriage between two people from minority racial groups is relatively infrequent.

* Whites and blacks have the lowest intermarriage rates while American Indians, Hawaiians, and multiple-race people have the highest. Asians and people reporting some other race have intermediate intermarriage rates.

* Black men are more likely to intermarry than black women, while Asian women are more likely to intermarry than Asian men. Men and women from other racial groups are equally likely to intermarry.

* About one-fourth of Hispanic couples are inter-Hispanic, a rate that has been fairly stable since 1980.

* Younger and better-educated Americans are more likely to intermarry than older and less-educated Americans.

* U.S.-born Asians and Hispanics and foreign-born whites and blacks are more likely to intermarry than foreign-born Asians and Hispanics and U.S.-born whites and blacks.

* More children are growing up in either interracial or inter-Hispanic families. Between 1970 and 2000, the number of children living in interracial families increased nearly fourfold-from 900,000 to more than 3 million-while the number in inter-Hispanic families increased nearly threefold-from 800,000 to 2 million.

U.S. Population Grows, Diversifies

The U.S. population was already racially and ethnically diverse at the nation's founding, and it has continued to grow and become more racially and ethnically diverse, as shown in Table 1 (page 10).15 Historically, the U.S. population was composed of an overwhelmingly large white majority; the black population was the only significant minority population, along with smaller populations of American Indians, Mexicans, Asians, and others. As recently as 1970, whites were 88 percent of the total population; blacks were 11 percent; and American Indians, Asians, and Hawaiians were less than 1 percent each. Hispanics were estimated to be about 5 percent of the 1970 population.