Impact of racial and ethnic exogamy on forecast population distributions for the United States in 2030: results of a macro-simulation

Frederick W. Hollmann, U.S. Census Bureau
Ward Kingkade, U.S. Census Bureau

A major problem in forecasting race and ethnicity in a diverse population is the role of interracial childbearing, and the way in which children of interracial or inter-ethnic mating identify their race or ethnicity. The US population is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, and it is almost inevitable that exogamy will rise, simply because of the increased diversity of potential mates. A recent change in the guidelines for reporting race in the census and in administrative records demonstrates the problems of characterizing race in a multi-racial environment. We assume the results of the United States Census 2000 as a reporting universe for the cross-classification of race with Hispanic origin, and show the effects of different assumptions about future interracial childbearing on the evolution of racial diversity. We will conduct the analysis under alternative assumptions regarding international migration.