Most statistics pages about interracial relationships repeat the same handful of numbers without saying where they came from, what year the data is from, or what the researchers actually measured. That matters, because several of the most widely quoted figures do not mean what they appear to mean.
This page gives the numbers with their sources, their collection dates, and the limitations the original researchers noted themselves.
How Common Are Interracial Relationships?
Two figures circulate, and they measure different populations.
| Measure | Figure | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newlyweds marrying across race/ethnicity | 17% | 2015 | Pew Research Center |
| All married-couple households that are interracial/interethnic | 10.2% | 2012–2016 | U.S. Census Bureau |
| All married people with a different-race spouse | 10% (11 million) | 2015 | Pew Research Center |
| Cohabiting couples with a partner of another race | 18% | 2015 | Pew Research Center |
The newlywed number is higher because it captures only recent marriages, and intermarriage has increased over time. The household number includes marriages formed decades ago, when intermarriage was rarer.
Growth over time, among newlyweds:
| Year | Share intermarried |
|---|---|
| 1967 | 3% |
| 1980 | 7% |
| 2015 | 17% |
In absolute terms, about 230,000 newlyweds married across racial or ethnic lines in 1980. By 2015 that figure was more than 670,000.
Intermarriage by Race and Gender
Rates differ substantially by group, and the gender patterns run in opposite directions for different races.
Share of 2015 newlyweds who married someone of a different race or ethnicity:
| Group | Overall | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asian | 29% | 21% | 36% |
| Hispanic | 27% | 26% | 28% |
| Black | 18% | 24% | 12% |
| White | 11% | 12% | 10% |
Two gender gaps stand out, and they point in opposite directions. Black men intermarry at twice the rate of Black women (24% vs 12%). Asian women intermarry at well above the rate of Asian men (36% vs 21%). Among White and Hispanic newlyweds there is no meaningful gender gap.
The Black gender gap is long-standing rather than recent: in 1980 the figures were 8% for Black men and 3% for Black women.
Which Pairings Are Most Common
Among intermarried newlywed couples in 2015:
| Couple composition | Share of intermarried couples |
|---|---|
| One Hispanic, one White | 42% |
| One Asian, one White | 15% |
| One Black, one White | 11% |
Broken down by which spouse is which, the asymmetries become visible:
| Specific pairing | Share |
|---|---|
| White man / Hispanic woman | 22% |
| White woman / Hispanic man | 20% |
| White man / Asian woman | 11% |
| Black man / White woman | 7% |
| White woman / Asian man | 4% |
| White man / Black woman | 3% |
The BWWM pairing this site writes about is among the least common configurations in the data — 3% of intermarried couples. Worth noting when reading claims about what is “typical.”
The Divorce Statistic, and Why It Is Usually Reported Wrong
You will see this everywhere: interracial couples have a 41% chance of divorce within 10 years, versus 31% for same-race couples.
The number is real. Almost everything usually said about it is not.
Where it comes from: Bramlett and Mosher (2002), a National Center for Health Statistics report using 1995 National Survey of Family Growth data.
What the original report actually says, on page 18:
“After 10 years of marriage, interracial marriages have a 41-percent chance of disruption and same-race marriages have a 31-percent chance of disruption.”
Four things about this that summaries omit:
- It measures “disruption,” meaning separation or divorce — not divorce. Calling it a divorce rate misstates it.
- The data is from 1995. The 2002 date attached to it is the publication year. The underlying survey is now three decades old.
- Female respondents only, ages 15–44. It is not a couple-level sample.
- It controls for nothing — not age at marriage, education, income, or cohabitation history. It is a descriptive life table. The same report shows age at marriage produces a far larger spread (48% disruption for brides under 18 versus 24% for brides 25 and over).
The report also states plainly that sample sizes were too small to break results down by specific pairing.
What Happens When Researchers Add Controls
Zhang and Van Hook (2009) analyzed 23,139 married couples from the Survey of Income and Program Participation — couple-level data, unlike the NSFG figure. Their conclusion:
“Although marital dissolution was found to be strongly associated with race or ethnicity, the results failed to provide evidence that interracial marriage per se is associated with an elevated risk of marital dissolution.”
In other words, the raw gap largely reflects who is marrying, not the fact of crossing racial lines.
The Aggregate Hides a Sign Reversal
Bratter and King (2008), using 2002 NSFG data, broke results down by specific pairing. Compared with White/White marriages, adjusted for background characteristics:
| Pairing | Divorce risk vs White/White |
|---|---|
| Black husband / White wife | About 2× more likely |
| Asian husband / White wife | +59% |
| White husband / Asian wife | +4% (no real difference) |
| White husband / Black wife | −44% (substantially LESS likely) |
The authors’ own summary:
“We find that although interracial marriages overall are more vulnerable to divorce, this reflects the experience of some but not all couples.”
The pattern is gendered rather than simply “interracial.” Risk concentrates in White wife / non-White husband pairings. The reverse combinations show similar or lower risk than White/White marriages — and BWWM marriages specifically were the most stable category in their analysis.
This is the single most important thing missing from most statistics roundups: the headline number conceals opposite-signed effects.
The Newest Evidence Complicates It Again
Rosenfeld and Roesler (2023) pooled ten NSFG cycles covering marital histories from 1950 to 2017 — the largest analysis to date. They found an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.31 for interracial couples, and, notably, that it has not declined across marriage cohorts:
“These predicted convergences in marital dissolution rates have not taken place.”
That cuts against the intuitive story that falling social disapproval should have closed the gap. Their race categories are coarse, though, and they do not decompose by pairing — so this does not override Bratter and King’s finding on specific combinations.
Honest summary of the state of the evidence: there is no scholarly consensus that interracial marriage independently causes divorce. The aggregate gap is modest, partly compositional, and conceals pairings that run in opposite directions. The best pairing-level evidence available is from 2002 data and has not been replicated on modern samples.
A caution: several statistics-aggregator sites circulate figures like “White-Black marriages have a 72% ten-year divorce rate.” We could not locate that figure in any NSFG release or peer-reviewed source. Treat unsourced pairing-level numbers skeptically.
Public Approval
Gallup has asked about approval of marriage between Black and White Americans since 1958.
| Year | Approve |
|---|---|
| 1958 | 4% |
| 1968 | 20% |
| 1991 | 48% |
| 1997 | 64% |
| 2013 | 87% |
| 2021 | 94% |
By age in 2021: 98% among 18–29, 97% among 30–49, 91% among 50 and over. By race: 93% of White adults, 96% of non-White adults.
Two caveats. The question asks specifically about Black–White marriage, not interracial marriage generally. And 2021 is Gallup’s most recent reading on this trend, based on interviews conducted July 6–21, 2021, with 1,007 adults (margin of error ±4 points).
Where Couples Live
Intermarriage is more common in metropolitan areas — 18% of newlyweds, versus 11% outside metro areas.
The pattern is not uniform by group. White newlyweds are twice as likely to intermarry in metro areas (12% vs 6%), which fits the larger pool of non-White potential partners. But Asian and Hispanic newlyweds show the reverse pattern: 47% of Asian newlyweds in non-metro areas intermarried versus 28% in metro areas, likely because there are fewer same-group partners available.
Black newlyweds show identical rates in both (18% each).
At the household level, the Census Bureau found interracial or interethnic married-couple households grew from 7.4% to 10.2% between 2000 and 2012–2016, with increases in every state.
What These Numbers Do Not Tell You
Statistics describe populations, not relationships. A few limits worth keeping in mind:
- Aggregate divorce figures say nothing about any individual couple. The strongest predictors of divorce in any marriage — age at marriage, education, economic stability — are not about race.
- Most of this data is old. The pairing-level divorce evidence is from 2002. The main Pew intermarriage analysis is from 2015. The Gallup approval trend stops at 2021.
- Categories are coarse. Most datasets use a handful of race categories and cannot capture multiracial identity, ethnicity within groups, or how couples see themselves.
- Higher stress does not mean worse relationships. Research on health outcomes in interracial couples points to discrimination as the mechanism, not anything inherent to the pairing. That distinction matters for what couples can actually do about it.
For what the research says about the pressures behind these numbers, see what an interracial relationship really takes and the deeper breakdown of interracial divorce rate research.
Sources
- Pew Research Center. “Intermarriage in the U.S. 50 Years After Loving v. Virginia,” Chapter 1: Trends and patterns in intermarriage. Gretchen Livingston and Anna Brown, May 2017. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/05/18/1-trends-and-patterns-in-intermarriage/
- U.S. Census Bureau. “Growth in Interracial and Interethnic Married-Couple Households.” Brittany Rico, Rose M. Kreider and Lydia Anderson, July 2018. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/07/interracial-marriages.html
- Bramlett MD, Mosher WD. “Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States.” National Center for Health Statistics, Vital and Health Statistics Series 23, No. 22, 2002 (1995 NSFG data). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23_022.pdf
- Zhang Y, Van Hook J. “Marital Dissolution Among Interracial Couples.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 71(1):95-107, 2009. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25284887/
- Bratter JL, King RB. “‘But Will It Last?’: Marital Instability Among Interracial and Same-Race Couples.” Family Relations, 57(2):160-171, 2008. Journal listing: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ789855 — full text PDF: https://www.healthymarriageinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/But-Will-It-Last—Marital.pdf
- Rosenfeld MJ, Roesler K. “Stability and change in predictors of marital dissolution in the US 1950-2017.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 85(4), 2023. Author full text PDF: https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_Roesler_JMF_2023_stability_and_change_divorce.pdf
- Kuroki M. “Marital Dissolution and Formation for Interracial Couples: Evidence from Parents of Biracial Children.” Race and Social Problems, 9(4):255-261, 2017. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12552-017-9202-4
- Choi KH, Tienda M. “Stability and outcome of interracial cohabitation before and after marriage.” Demographic Research, 46(33), 2022. https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol46/33/46-33.pdf
- McCarthy J. “U.S. Approval of Interracial Marriage at New High of 94%.” Gallup, September 2021. https://news.gallup.com/poll/354638/approval-interracial-marriage-us-new-high.aspx