Intermarriage

A new report from the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends project analyzes the rising prevalence of racial and ethnic intermarriage, and compares rates among different ethnic and racial groups. The report also uses public opinion data to look at changing attitudes toward intermarriage.

The share of new marriages between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from each other increased to 15.1% in 2010, more than double the share in 1980.

Rates of intermarriage have risen in the United States, but trends differ markedly for different race and ethnic groups, according to a new Pew Research Center report that makes extensive use of U.S. Census Bureau data.

This dramatic increase has been driven in part by the weakening of longstanding cultural taboos against intermarriage and in part by a large, multi-decade wave of immigrants from Latin America and Asia.

The U.S. Religious Landscape Surveyfinds that more than one-in-four (27%) American adults who are married or living with a partner are in religiously mixed relationships. If people from different Protestant denominational families are included – for example, a marriage between a Methodist and a Lutheran – nearly four-in-ten (37%) couples are religiously mixed. The survey, […]

That degree of familiarity with — and proximity to — interracial marriage is the latest milestone in what has been a sweeping change in behaviors and attitudes concerning interracial relationships over the past several decades.