Study: Interracial Marriage, Acceptance Growing
Forty-five years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage in the United States, the rate of marriage across racial and ethnic lines is on the rise, according to a new study released Thursday.
And while such “intermarriages” continue to grow, so too does public acceptance of such unions, according to the study by the Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends project.
About 15% of new marriages in the United States in 2010 were between spouses of different races or ethnicities, more than doubling the 1980 level of 6.7%, according to the study.
Looking at all married couples in 2010, regardless of when they married, so-called “intermarriages” reached an all-time high of 8.4% in 2010, compared to 3.2% in 1980, the study said.
The study analyzed the demographic and characteristics of newlyweds who differ in race or ethnicity and compared them to couples of the same race or ethnicity. The study defines newly weds as couples who married in the year prior to the survey date.