Marriage Order, Marring Timing, and Black/White Intermarriage in the United States, 1968-1995

Vincent K. Fu, University of Utah

This study investigates the effect of marriage order and marriage timing on Black/White intermarriage. Past intermarriage research has focused mainly on first marriages or marriages of younger people. However, marriages including at least one previously married partner approached half of all marriages formed in 1990. Differing patterns in remarriages and first marriages may alter conclusions about the direction or pace of change in boundaries between Blacks and Whites. Most intermarriage research has not examined the relationship between marriage timing and racial intermarriage because age at marriage is no longer available from the Census. The marriage license data used for this study data have information on both marriage age and previous marital status. Marriage license data are also superior because studies using Census data are adversely affected by recent increases in age at marriage as the marriages of young people analyzed by these studies represent a diminishing share of recent marriages.