Interracial Marriage is Rising; And Those Couples Make More Money

OK, we're not suggesting that the reason interracial marriage is on the rise can be solely or even primarily attributed to the fact that those families have higher incomes.

But it can't hurt.

Trends are built on changing mores, perceptions, circumstances, demographics and tastes. And they also say something about a society's visions of the future. There is a reason why the fastest growing language study programs in the US are Mandarin. Just as there is a reason that centuries of insular biases against marrying people of different religions and races are breaking down in the face of, well, reality. Educational attainment is the primary predictor of future economic success. And people are inclined to marry those who they believe share their goals and values. Women now comprise 60% of students in US colleges and universities. In other words, unless you are willing to think more broadly about who's eligible, your options are more limited than they used to be, whoever you are.

Try plugging all of this into your eHarmony profile. JL

Catherine Rampell reports in the Economix blog:

The share of American newlyweds in interracial couples has more than doubled in the last 30 years, to 15 percent in 2010 from 6.7 percent in 1980.

That’s according to a new Pew Research Center report, which also looked at how interracial couples compare to same-race couples when it comes to income. On its face, it looks as if couples who married out of their own race are socioeconomically similar to those who married in: in 2008-10, the median combined annual earnings of interracial newlyweds was $56,711, compared with $55,000 for same-race newlyweds.
The numbers vary tremendously, though, depending on the combination of races involved. Here is a list of newlyweds from 2008-2010, sorted by different racial combinations of husbands and wives:

New marriages with an Asian-American groom and a white bride earned the most money, with the median such couple bringing in $71,800 between the two of them. Note, though, that such pairings represent less than 1 percent of all newly married spouses of any racial combination, so the sample size is small.

The converse of that group — new spouses in which the husband is white and the wife is Asian-American — earn almost as much, with a combined median income of $70,952. They are followed by newlyweds who are both Asian, who typically earn $62,000 in total.

So basically, what these numbers are reflecting is that Asians earn more money, period, which is generally true across the population of Asian-Americans and has been the case for a while.

At the bottom of the income list is new marriages in which both spouses are Hispanic. Given the share of Hispanics who are recent immigrants from poor countries, this is probably not surprising.