Unmarried partnerships more diverse than married couples

WASHINGTON -- Unmarried couples -- whether same-sex or opposite-sex -- are far more likely than married couples to mix race or ethnicity, Census Bureau data shows.

About 7 percent of the nation's 54.5 million married couples are mixed racially or ethnically, compared to about 15 percent of the 4.9 million unmarried heterosexual couples. The percentage is only slightly lower for the nation's nearly 600,000 same-sex couples.

Deva Kyle, a black law student who lives with her white boyfriend, said people in interracial relationships tend to be more liberal so are more apt to share a home without being married.

Kyle, 24, of Alexandria, Va., has no plans to marry her boyfriend of five years. She said they plan a "commitment ceremony" that is not legally binding but still makes a statement for family and friends.

"Marriage has a lot of patriarchal underpinnings that I have a lot of problems with," she said.

Dorion Solot, executive director of the Boston-based Alternatives to Marriage Project, said Kyle is an example of a growing number of people who don't see race as an inhibiting factor to a relationship.

"What was once the talk of gossipmongers is now the new normal," she said. "The younger generation expects to live together before marriage, and doesn't see race as a barrier to love."

The census report summarizes unmarried partner data initially released two years ago by state, race and age. The 2000 head count was the first in which the bureau extensively analyzed unmarried partner data.

Specifically, a question on the census asked "How is this person related?" For people living together who were unrelated, options included "Roomer, boarder," "Housemate, roommate," "unmarried partner" and "foster child."

By state, Utah had one of the lowest percentages of homes headed by unmarried couples, about 5 percent of all coupled households. Alabama and Arkansas were also among the lowest states.

Alaska, Nevada and Vermont each had over 12.5 percent of their coupled households led by unmarried partners, among the highest in the country.

Totaling heterosexual and homosexual couples, the census found 5.5 million households headed by unmarried partners nationwide, just over 5 percent of the country's 105.5 million homes, while married couples head just over 50 percent.

Interracial relationships -- regardless of marital status -- tended to occur more often in the West and states with higher minority populations, said Martin O'Connell, head of the bureau's family statistics branch.

It occurred most often in Hawaii, where over one-third of married couples were interracial, along with over one-half of opposite-sex unmarried couples. Interracial couples comprised less than one-half of gay and lesbian partnerships.

Rates were also high in Alaska, New Mexico and Oklahoma. The latter two have large populations of Native Americans.

Conversely, the New England states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, which have low minority populations, also have lower percentages of interracial relationships.

Vermont in 2000 passed the first law granting homosexual couples virtually all the state rights and responsibilities afforded to married couples. Among homosexual partners in Vermont, just over 1 in 20 were between people of different races or ethnicity.

David Smith, spokesman for the gay rights advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, called the report "groundbreaking" since the government hadn't issued such a detailed report on homosexual relationships before.

Smith believes homosexual couples are undercounted, regardless of race or ethnic background. He said some people, fearing discrimination, may not have admitted on the census form that they are in a same-sex relationship.

Federal law mandates all answers to the census remain confidential.

The 1990 census form was the first to offer an "unmarried partner" checkoff. It found 3.2 million total unmarried partners, less than 5 percent of whom were the same sex. That data cannot be directly compared with 2000 because of differences in its collection and analysis.

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On the Net

Human Rights Campaign: www.hrc.org/

Alternatives to Marriage Project: www.unmarried.org/