Americans rarely marry outside their race or class, a trend examined by Harvard experts in a recent interview published on June 2. A new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper analyzed Census data and federal tax records to determine whether increased exposure to members of other race and class groups affects marriage rates between Black and white partners. The study found that while greater exposure translates into more marriages across class lines, it has no detectable effect on interracial marriage.
The paper was authored by Benjamin Goldman, assistant professor at Cornell University; Jamie Gracie, postdoctoral fellow with Harvard’s EdRedesign Lab; and Sonya Porter, a U.S. Census Bureau researcher. In the interview, Goldman said there are two high-level reasons for low intergroup marriage rates: inherited norms that favor marrying within one’s own community, and limited opportunities for contact across group lines due to residential segregation. “We live our lives in a very segregated way in terms of the places we work, live, and socialize,” Goldman said.
Gracie explained that the goal of their research was to understand what drives the low rate of intergroup marriage by focusing on residential segregation rather than all possible factors. She said, “We know that neighborhoods are segregated in terms of race and class. We found that when neighborhoods happen to have people from low- and high-income backgrounds living in the same area, more of these cross-class marriages form. However, the same wasn’t true for interracial marriage.”
Goldman added that most marriages occur between individuals who lived near each other before marrying: “If people tend to marry from the pool of their neighbors or those they live nearby… then that’s a natural way in which you could have that polarization in the marriage market.” The study noted that marriages between Black and white individuals make up only 11 percent of all interracial marriages—lower than Latino-white or Asian-white pairings—and this is significant because household income inequality often reflects these patterns.
While acknowledging limitations in explaining why white-Black marriage rates remain so low beyond neighborhood segregation effects, Goldman suggested ingrained social preferences may play a role: “A possible explanation is that it’s not enough to reduce segregation… people still self-segregate… A different explanation would be that people have more ingrained views or preferences toward marrying across race lines.” Gracie highlighted future research possibilities regarding how such preferences are formed.
