Fertility and Racial Stratification

Abstract

This book chapter focuses on the role of essentialism assimilationism and racial stratification in explaining differential fertility and family formation among racial and ethnic groups in the US. Essentialism is the social consequences of racial differences and it includes the historical complication of the eugenics movement. Assimilationism is the preference for accepting the norms of the larger culture and interracial marriage. Racial stratification results in the desire to eliminate ethnocentrism and racial marginalization. Race and fertility were linked by the eugenics connection between biology and behavioral outcomes. Population studies in the US were based on research among eugenicists. Eugenicists were concerned about the diminished intellectual ability and cognitive achievement associated with higher parity births and about the link between heredity and physical mental moral and behavioral characteristics of offspring. Early research focused on differences in the birth rate by social class and race. More recent biological determinists argue that racial groups differ in cognitive ability and that these differences are genetic and are explanatory factors in societal differences by race. Most modern demography is concerned with lowering fertility as a means of reducing human suffering and inequality. This view is held by the assimilationists. It is argued that racial differences in fertility disappear when socioeconomic factors are accounted for or fertility differences are confounded by insecurities associated with minority group status. Although the rates of intermarriage between Blacks and European Americans increased over the past two decades the levels are low compared to Hispanics Asians and Native Americans and reflect the social space between groups. Social intolerance and cultural respect contribute to a racially stratified society. Racial differences in family structure reflect both culture and socioeconomic factors.