Desegregated Fertility: A Spatial Proximity Analysis of Black and White Biracial Fertility in the United States

Carolette R. Norwood, Saint Mary's College Notre Dame

Since the abolishment of laws regulating interracial sex and marriage, there has been a steady rise in the number of biracial children born in the United States each decade, particularly between black men and white women. And although biracial fertility has been a reality in the United State its entire history, the topic of multi-race fertility is rarely discussed publicly or analyzed scholarly. Using US census data and the national center of health statistic’s fertility data, the present study examines the effects of spatial concentration on black-white biracial fertility in the United States for 1990 and 2000. Preliminary findings reveal very strong support for the study’s hypotheses that biracial fertility is the outcome of reduced segregation and inflated sex ratios. Seventy percent of variance in county rates of biracial fertility is explained by segregation and sex ratio.