Racial Intermarriage in the Americas

Albert Esteve, Center for Demographic Studies (Barcelona)
Edward E. Telles, Princeton University

We compare patterns of racial intermarriage in Brazil, Cuba and the United States with particular attention to educational differences. These countries have similar shares of White and Black populations but remarkably different racial and social stratification and classification systems. For example, educational differences by race are particularly great in Brazil and almost nonexistent in Cuba, with the United States in between.There are strong race mixture ideologies and a large population denoted as mixed race in Brazil and Cuba but not in the United States. We use IPUMS census microdata for the 2000 round of censuses of Brazil, Cuba, and the United States. Our findings reveal that racial endogamy is double that in Cuba and three times that in Brazil. The educational gradients are positive for Cuba and Brazil, where endogamy Increases with education, while overall it is negative or nonexistent in the United States, although it is positive for Afro-Americans.