Interracial Divorce Statistics

Because my 1997 article on interracial marriage "Is Love Colorblind?" remains popular, I get asked a lot about statistics on interracial divorce rates, but I'd never seen any. A reader now points me to this 1998 government report (PDF) that says about what you'd expect. Marital break-up rates for interracial couples are somewhat higher, but not hugely so:

First marriages in which the husband and wife are both members of the same race/ethnicity are more likely to succeed than those in which the spouses are of different race/ethnicity. After 10 years of marriage, interracial marriages have a 41% chance of disruption and same-race marriages have a 31% chance of disruption. The number of specific comparisons that can be made is limited because of small sample sizes. While specific pairings such as ‘‘white/black’’ or ‘‘black/Asian’’ are not shown, ... ‘‘White/any other’’ couples [which I believe include white-Hispanic as well as white-Asian] have similar chances of marital disruption [40%] as all ‘‘different race’’ couples [41%], which is not surprising as the majority of ‘‘different race’’ couples are ‘‘white/any other’’ pairings. ‘‘Black/any other’’ couples appear to have chances of marital disruption [48%] similar to those for all black couples [47%].

For first marriages between husbands and wives of the same race/ethnicity, the "disruption" (divorce or separation) rates at 10 years are Asians 20%, non-Hispanic whites 32%, Hispanics 34%, and blacks 47%. Lots of negative demographic factors correlate with higher divorce rates, so it's likely that the Hispanic "propensity to divorce" is less than the white propensity, all else being equal. Somebody should do a regression study of the demographic characteristics of interracial couples and see how their underlying propensity to divorce compares to same race couples.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer