One in six newlyweds’ spouse is of different race or ethnicity

WASHINGTON — More and more Americans are marrying people of different races and ethnicities, reaching at least one in six newlyweds in 2015, the highest proportion in U.S. history, a new study shows.

Currently, there are 11 million people — or one out of 10 married people — in the United States with a spouse of a different race or ethnicity, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

This is a big jump from 50 years ago, when the Supreme Court ruled interracial marriage was legal throughout the United States. That year, only three per cent of newlyweds were intermarried — which means they had a spouse of a different race or ethnicity. In 2015, 17 per cent of newlyweds were intermarried, a number that had held steady from the year before.

“There’s much greater racial tolerance in the United States, with attitudes having changed in a way where it’s much more positive toward interracial marriage,” said Daniel T. Lichter, director of the Institute for the Social Sciences at Cornell University, who studies interracial and interethnic marriages. “But I think that a greater reason is the growing diversity of the population. There are just more demographic opportunities for people to marry someone of another race or ethnicity.”

Asians were most likely to intermarry in 2015, with 29 per cent of newlywed Asians married to someone of a different race or ethnicity, followed by Hispanics at 27 per cent, blacks at 18 per cent and whites at 11 per cent.

There also were differences between men and women.

Asian and Hispanic women were the most likely to marry someone of a different race or ethnicity in 2015, while Hispanic and black men were the most likely among men, the data showed. Thirty-six per cent of Asian women and 28 per cent of Hispanic women intermarried in 2015, while 26 per cent of Hispanic men and 24 per cent of black men married someone of a different race or ethnicity.

White and black women were the least likely to consider someone of a different race or ethnicity in 2015. Only 10 per cent of white women married outside their race or ethnicity, while only 12 per cent of black women were involved in intermarriage — half the rate of black men.

The study also found interracial and interethnic marriages are more likely to happen in cities. Eighteen per cent of newlyweds in metropolitan areas were intermarried compared with 11 per cent living elsewhere.