Crossing, Blurring, or Unable to tell? Interracial marriage Trends and Racial Measurement in Census 2020.

• In Event: 40861 - Section on Sociology of Population Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Racial and Ethnic Inequality and Health

Abstract

Interracial marriage is a potent marker of the strength or flexibility of boundaries between racial groups and relies on faithful rendering of racial identities of spouses to mark racial difference. Changes in racial measurement in Census 2020, specifically the use of open-ended responses for a question on origins and a coding scheme that interpreted these responses as racial identities have cast doubt on the racial demographic change recorded in Census 2020. Specifically, this recoding resulted in reclassifying individuals, often classifying them as multiple races. How does this potentially artificial indicator of racial identity and racial difference shape the patterns of interracial marriage? This paper draws on American Community Survey single year estimates across several years to explore patterns of racial intermarriage during a pre-2020 time span, (2016-2019) and compares this with trends documented post Census 2020 (2021-2023). The preliminary findings reveal slight changes in trends overall with more significant evidence of yearly changes occurring for some groups. The proportion of marriages that are interracial (i.e., that is occurring between two single-race adults of different races) has changed slightly between these time periods, for example. We also employ logistic regression analyses to explore the relationship between year and the likelihood of interracial marriage by race and gender. We find that relative to pre-2020 years, Whites and Black men are more likely to be intermarried, while Multiracial Latinos are less likely to be intermarried. Other groups racial intermarriage seems less impacted by the changes in race measurement. They either remain stable throughout both time period or are increasingly more likely to intermarry across the years. Forthcoming analyses will unpack how factors associated to intermarriage potentially change in relevance across years.

Authors

• Jenifer L. Bratter, Rice University

• Shahill J Parsons, Rice University

• Ryann Williams, Rice University