If White people were marrying without regard for race, we’d expect 17% of them to intermarry.In actuality, though, only 2.7% of White people intermarried.
And more than 15% were “intermarriages” – marriages between people who don’t identify as the same racial or ethnic group, up from 6.7% in 1980.Americans on whether they believed it was acceptable for Blacks and Whites to date each other.At that time, less than 50% of Americans thought interracial dating was acceptable. Our examination of the data suggests that the increasing rate of intermarriage may be driven by demographic changes more than changing attitudes.In 1980, less than 4% of all married Black people under the age of 35 were not married to other black people. But Black people only made up between six to seven percent of the total under 35 married population during this period.So while this is a substantial increase, it accounts for less than 1% of the overall increase in interracial marriages.
But demographic changes likely account for more than this 3.5% increase.