I posted a few days ago about mixed marriages. Interestingly, the Pew Research Group just published a survey on mixed marriages in the US. A few results:
— About 15% of all new marriages in the US in 2010 were interracial, compared with less than 7% in 1980.
— About 9% of white, 17% of black, and 27% of Asian newlyweds in 2010 were in interracial marriages. I think this may partially reflect the ratio of available partners in the general population. If you are non-white, there are many more potential white spouses than of your own race.
— Broken down by gender, white men and women were about equally likely to enter interracial marriages (9%), but Asian women were at 36% vs. Asian men at less than 17%. This mirrored the street scene I saw in Thailand.
— Interracial marriages in general are more likely to divorce, with a notable exception that Asian/white marriages were LESS likely to divorce than white/white marriages.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Donna // Feb 16, 2012 at 6:41 pm
The most surprising stat you quoted is that Asian/Asian marriages are more likely to divorce than Asian/white marriages. Interesting.
2 Daryl // Feb 17, 2012 at 9:42 am
My bad, Donna. I misquoted the Pew article and have changed the post above. They stated that Asian/White were less likely to divorce than white/white, but they didn’t compare it to Asian/Asian.
3 Donna // Feb 17, 2012 at 7:02 pm
That makes a lot more sense. I would bet Asian/Asian marriages are pretty solid, too.
4 Dale // Feb 18, 2012 at 8:28 am
Just remember that a successful marriage does not always mean staying together for life. A lot of the time spouses stay together for various reasons like temperament, social pressure, culture, and fear of being alone. They may be extremely unhappy in the marriage but ride it out until death anyway.
5 Daryl // Feb 19, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Dale,
That’s a very good point. And turning your first statement around, an unsuccessful marriage doesn’t always mean divorcing, either
And I’m sure that different cultures and therefore different ethnicities attach different amounts of stigma to divorce, so that will also skew the correlation between divorce and the happiness of the marriages.