Tendencies and Trends in Designating AAIN Race at Birth

Gretchen Greene, Northwest Economic Associates
Jeri Sawyer, Northwest Economic Associates

The objective of this paper is to examine recent trends in racial identification at birth based on data from Washington State’s Center for Health Statistics between 1992 and 2002. Issues to be considered include the racial designation of American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) children from mixed race unions, and preferences for the mother’s compared with the father’s race in different counties. Sink (1997) identified the tendency to designate a child AIAN when either one of the parents is AIAN, unlike other racial groups. Another important question is how these tendencies may be changing over the ten year period of data. Such information is crucial to providing a better understanding of future AIAN populations, and could also shed light on the transition to a multiracial-identified society that was initiated with Census 2000.