Fertility in Interracial Cohabitation

Kate Hee Choi, University of Western Ontario
Rachel E. Goldberg , University of California, Irvine

Interracial couples cohabit at higher rates than same-race couples, which is frequently attributed to lower barriers to interracial cohabitation relative to intermarriage. This begs the question of whether the social significance of cohabitation differs between interracial and same-race couples. Building on other work that has used the fertility behavior of cohabiting couples as a tool to indirectly infer the significance of cohabitation for particular groups, we assess the social significance of interracial cohabitation by comparing the odds of pregnancy, unintended pregnancy, and legitimation following a non-marital pregnancy of women in interracial and same-race cohabitations. We use 2006-2015 National Survey of Family Growth data. Preliminary analyses revealed that the fertility behavior of White women with Black cohabiting partners mirrored closely that of Black women in same-race cohabitations. The fertility behavior of White women with Hispanic partners fell in between those of White and Hispanic women in same-race cohabitations.

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 Presented in Session 231. The Union Context of Childbearing