25 Notable Biracial Couples Statistics

Interracial marriage is becoming more common around the world and this is exemplified by the statistics that are coming out of the United States and other large nations. In the US alone, over 2 million marriages occur every year.

According to Pew Research, almost 200,000 people of Caucasian descent marry someone of a different race.

Biracial Couples Facts

This means that 8.4% of marriages in the US are interracial marriages. This is up over 5% in the last 30 years. Some of these increases may be because of the higher levels of Hispanic immigration that are occurring in the US right now. Hispanic demographics are the most likely to marry outside of their race.

• 43% of the interracial marriages that occurred in the US in 2010 were between Caucasians and Hispanics.
• 14.4% of marriages in 2010 were between Caucasians and Asians.
• In the 2010 census, 9 million Americans listed their ethnicity as a mixed race.
• While only 4.8% of marriages of Americans 35 and under were intermarriages in 1980, this increased to 13.4% in 2014.
• The nearly 20% increase of populations that were already intermarrying at higher rates explains a large portion of the rise in intermarriage.

The attitudes toward biracial couples are changing around the world and this will only encourage biracial couples to become more prevalent in society. In similar surveys from the 1950’s, only 4% of people were supportive of interracial couples. Today a vast majority of people, or 87%, find that there is nothing wrong with the practice of marrying someone of a different race. Despite the increased prevalence of interracial couples, however, 53.6% of births in the United States are still in the racial category of Caucasian.

How Do Biracial Couples Compare?

• The divorce rates for biracial couples mirrors the divorce rates of couples who marry within their same race.
• The highest risk demographic in biracial couples for a divorce to occur is that of Caucasian women, who have higher divorce rates with African-American and Hispanic men than the average divorce rate.
• In 2012, 4.8 million interracial couples were married, which was an all-time high in the United States.
• 1 in 12 marriages today is an interracial union.
• States where Hispanic or Asian immigration is more common have higher rates of biracial marriages occurring, with up to 20% of total marriages being interracial.
• More than 25% of Asians and Hispanics who married in 2010 had a spouse of a different race.
• Biracial couples who are Caucasian and Asian have the highest levels of median income, with a salary that is $71,000 on average. This is higher than any other couple demographic, including same race marriages.

As attitudes continue to adjust and change, the prevalence of biracial couples will continue to grow. This creates a new form of a minority in the US of multi-race children, but over time even this will become closer to a majority than a minority as biracial couples become more common. With this becoming more common, however, there are still certain divides in race that have yet to be overcome. The three states where Caucasian and African-American couples join together the most, Kansas, North Carolina, and Virginia, have rates that are just 3%.

How Fast Are Interracial Couples Joining Together?

• About 15% of all new marriages are made up of couples that are of a different race or ethnicity from one another.
• 28% of Asians married outside of their race or ethnicity in this research, making their demographic the most likely to “marry out” with a relationship.
• 43% of Americans say that biracial couples are a trend that will only better society while only 11% of people say that it has made society worse.
• Those who describe themselves as liberals are more likely to support biracial couples than those who describe themselves as conservative.
• 63% of people surveyed said that they would be fine with someone in their own family marrying another person of a different race or ethnicity.
• Despite all of the positive statistics, Cheerios had to disable their YouTube comments on an advertisement that aired during the Super Bowl that featured a biracial couple and their child promoting the product.
• According to research, African-American women dating white men is the largest societal stigma that remains for biracial couples.

One of the traits of humanity is that people fear what is unknown to them. For people who are not generally exposed to a multi-race culture, the idea of marrying out is a difficult proposition for many of them. The statistics are encouraging, as 28% of people 30 years ago said it was unacceptable for interracial couples to exist, compared with just 11% today. Yet the example of Cheerios and the 2013 Super Bowl advertisement shows that there is still a long way to go for interracial couples to find generalized acceptance in today’ society.

A Final Thought About Biracial Couples

• Interracial couples are growing around the world. In Canada, for example, 340k children are growing up in mixed-race families.
• The definition of race or heritage can greatly skew the results of these statistics.
• The amount of biracial couples grew 33% in Canada between 2001-2006.
• The data suggests that the longer someone lives in a country as an immigrant, the more likely they are to marry someone outside of their native race or ethnicity.
• Japanese are the most likely to marry someone outside of their race/ethnicity worldwide, with some countries seeing a 75% coupling to a biracial partner.
• Mixed race couples typically see a much higher income rate, over $5,000 on average, when compared to same race couples.

The future looks quite bright for biracial couples. Not only are they making more money around the world, but they are facing fewer stigmas as time goes by. Despite this, however, there will always be people who are opposed to mixed-race couples simply because they represent a change in society. Will even the most hardcore opponents of biracial couples finally see the benefit that these unions bring to a community? Only time will tell.