Inter-racial marriages continue to grow in the U.S.

I'M A FIRST-GENERATION Filipino American. My wife is a Filipina American whose family has been in this country five generations. Through my extended family, I have relatives who are mixed race: Filipino plus white (a strong dose of Irish), black, Latino and Native American.

According to the U.S. Census, the rest of the country is catching up with my family. The  trend of interracial marriages is becoming more common place, according to the U.S. Census.

Is this what people mean when they say, "Love conquers all?"

By Brittany Rico, Rose M. Kreider and Lydia Anderson
U.S. CENSUS

MARRIAGE LOOKS a lot different today in many ways than in years past. As our nation becomes more racially and ethnically diverse, so are married couples.
The percentage of married-couple households that are interracial or interethnic grew across the United States from 7.4 to 10.2 percent from 2000 to 2012-2016. This change varied across states and counties and for specific interracial/interethnic combinations.

Is this what people mean when they say, "Love conquers all?"

Following is a press release from the U.S. Census:

There are seven types of interracial/interethnic married-couple combinations that make up 95.1 percent of all such married couples. The largest of these is non-Hispanic whites married to Hispanics, which increased in 43.2 percent of counties. In contrast, just 3.0 percent of counties showed an increase in the percentage of married-couple households that were non-Hispanic whites married to non-Hispanic American Indians or Alaska Natives.

While 40% of Asian females married outside their race in 2008, just 20% of Asian male newlyweds did the same. 

All states experienced an increase in the percentage of interracial and interethnic married-couple households from 2000 to 2012-2016.

• Two states, Hawaii and Oklahoma, and the District of Columbia increased by 4.34 percentage points or more. 
• Nine states, located mostly in the West and the Mid-Atlantic region, increased by 3.34 to 4.33 percentage points. 
• Seventeen states increased by 2.40 to 3.33 percentage points. 
• The remaining 22 states increased by less than 2.40 percentage points. 

The authors are family demographers in the Census Bureau’s Fertility and Family Statistics Branch.

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