Is the Ethnic Classification of Children Socioeconomically Selective? Comparing Biracial and Monoracial Interethnic Couples’ Choices

• In Event: 1284 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 09. Race/Ethnicity and Parental Socialization

Abstract

This paper examines how couples who do not share an ethnic background ethnically classify their children in the contemporary United States, and whether socioeconomic status affects the patterns of classification. Using 2011-2015 American Community Survey (ACS) data, the analysis explicitly compares couples who are interethnically partnered within and across racial lines. Children of interethnic parents are on the whole more socioeconomically advantaged than children of parents with shared ethnic origins, and within the group of interethnic parents, the findings suggest that more socioeconomically privileged families are also more likely to retain a complex ethnic classification for their children that includes the ethnic background of both parents, whereas less socioeconomically privileged parents are more likely to simplify the ethnic classification of their children. This is similarly true whether or not the parents’ interethnic partnership crosses racial lines.

Author

• Christel Kesler, Colby College