Friday, February 17, 2012

The Asian Exception to Rising Intermarriage

About 15% of new marriages are to people of different races or ethnicities, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.  This is about double the rate of intermarriage of a generation ago.

The one group in which out-marriage went down recently was among Asian-Americans.  Asians had the highest intermarriage rate of any of the standard racial groups in this country to begin with - 30.8% in 2008.  But this rate dropped slightly to 27.7% in 2010.

I think I know why.  Highly educated people like to marry one another. Asian-Americans are much more educated than other racial groups.  Even though there are not many Asians in America, they are much more likely to be college graduates - making a good marriage pool for other college graduates.

About 23% of white-white couples are college graduates.

About 53% of Asian-Asian couples are college graduates.

And white-Asian couples? Only 41%.

1 comment:

Diane M. said...

The fact that Asians are highly educated hasn't changed since the old data.

I favor the idea that there are more first generation Asian immigrants than there used to be. They might be more likely to marry other Asians.