Inter-Racial Marriage and Family Socio-Economic Status: A Study among Whites, Filipinos, Japanese, and Hawaiians in Hawaii

INTRODUCTIONInterracial marriages have been steadily increasing in the last few decades in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000; Lee and Edmonston, 2005), and are regarded by many as a sign of positive racial relations (Root, 2001; Qian and Lichter, 2001; Lee and Edmonston, 2005). One of me consequences of increased intermarriage is the rising numbers of American households that are headed by interracial couples with children who claim multiple racial heritages (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000), but how intermarriage is associated with family resources is seldom reported. In their studies on interracial marriage in Hawaii, Fu and Heaton (1997, 1999 and 2000) found that intermarriage filtered individuals with either high SES or low SES across racial groups, leading to an unintended negative consequence on racial minorities because their high achievers tended to marry out. These studies, however, did not include income variables so that the association between selective intermarriage and family financial well-being was not directly analyzed.This paper attempts to examine the little discussed association between intermarriage and family financial well-being by including variables of family income and probabilities of living in poverty. The focus of this paper is not on intergroup mate selection, but on how existing marriages relate to family resources measured by income and poverty, and how this relationship might affect future generations. It is anticipated that family socioeconomic status is somewhat moderate for exogamous couples and families, but either high or low for endogamous couples and families, depending upon the race or ethnicity of the married couples.Analysis of intermarried couples and households in this paper is based on the 2000 PUMS 5% sample data from the state of Hawaii. Hawaii data are used to test the above assumptions for three reasons. First, intermarriage in Hawaii has become a norm rather than an exception (Nordyke, 1989; Fu and Heaton, 1997, 2000). It occurs between all groups in large scales, making it possible to examine the association between marriage type and family financial resources across many groups rather than just between Whites and a certain few minorities. Second, because of its relative prevalence, intermarriages in Hawaii are very similar to ingroup marriages in how spouses choose each other, and consideration of race in mate selection is relatively weak (Schoen and Thomas, 1988; Fu and Heaton, 2000). This enables us to examine status exchange in intermarriages similarly as in endogamous marriages. In other words, intermarriage in mainland states tends to occur among the more educated and the younger cohorts, while in Hawaii it spreads to all age groups and all social strata (Lee and Edmonston, 2005). Lastly, the assumptions to be tested in this study were originally based on intermarriages in Hawaii, and using Hawaii couples can directly verify if those assumptions receive empirical support.RACIAL GROUPS IN HAWAHThe Hawaii state population in 2000 was about 1.21 million; spread over 65 different single or multiple-race groups (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). Most of these racial groups are very small, but four of them, Hawaiians, Whites, Japanese and Filipinos, are significantly larger than the rest. About 73% of all married households in the state in 2000 are between and within these four groups, accounting for 77.1% and 79.3% of all husbands and wives (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). Because of their large proportions, intermarriage among these four groups determines the trends and patterns of mate selection in the state and serves as an indicator of how status is exchanged in the marriage market between couples in both endogamous and exogamous marriages. To avoid possible skewing effects caused by very small group sizes (Besanceney, 1965; Schoen, 1986), only these four groups will be included in this study.HawaiiansThe history of Hawaii can be divided into four major periods: antiquity, monarchy, colonial and statehood, traced back at least 1,500 to 1,700 years when Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands and Tahiti came to live in the Hawaiian islands and became the first Hawaiians, or Kanaka maoli (Handy and Craighill, 1965:24; Kuykendall and Day, 1961:6; Kodama-Nishimoto et al. …