DrBanneker
Space is the Place
So I did one of my data blitzes again, maybe too much ham and greens. I will keep the beginning short and give details at the end after the conclusion and graphs, skip to the bolded if you have no patience. This was inspired by two main things:
1. The Pew study in 2017 that claimed high (I still think biased towards high) levels of IR amongst Black folks that everyone repeats on the net
2. The argument on the Coli as to whether Black women's IR footprint is higher since marriage doesn't tell the whole story
So basically we can't tell who dates each other and marriage numbers have their own issues, so why not use birth data? Since about 2016 the race of the father is reported nationally so I went for this. Basically, I looked at the data of births in 2021 to mothers between 20-39 segmented by race and education.
So basically this is a study on finding where Black people date each other most and least using birth data of the parents as a proxy
I have two sets of charts below: one for births where Black men are listed as the father. I summarize the highest and lowest counties where a Black man is the father and a Black woman is the mother. Next I do the same thing but for Black men with a bachelors degree or higher. Then I show the data for Black women with a bachelors or higher who listed Black men as the father on the birth certificate. I explain at the bottom of this post why I did it the way I did. I also ran the data for biracial Black folks.
Please note, the details are at the bottom because I know some people don't give a shyt about the boring stuff
MAIN FINDINGS:
1. If births are representative, Black male and Black female IR may be somewhat elevated by Pew. I talk about this at the end of this post. Nationwide for 2021 births, 8% of births to Black women had a non-Black father and 18% of the births where a Black man is listed as the father had a non-Black mother.
2. For Black people with bachelors degrees or higher, the number for the above is 10% for Black women and 22% for Black men. Note this is substantially below the Pew estimate of 30% of Black men with college degrees marrying out (and that study was 5 years ago so those people should be having kids)
3. Black men and women in the south and prosperous mid-Atlantic counties (think MD places like PG, Charles, Howard, and parts of PA and Delaware) had kids together 90%+ of the time, this held true even for those with bachelors degrees or higher. In the highest areas (MD and ATL) it was like 95%+ for men and women
4. On the flip side, Black men and women out west, particularly in SoCal and Colorado, had very high IR rates. The lowest for Black men being Orange County. Only 48% of the kids born in Orange County in 2021 where the father is listed as Black (with a bachelors degree or higher) were with a Black woman. The same in Orange County for Black women is 79%. The lowest county for Black women with bachelors degrees was Middlesex County, MA at 76%.
5. For mixed Black folks there was a big disparity: 50% of mixed Black-White women had kids with Black men while only 21% of mixed Black-White men had kids with Black women. When the mixed persons had bachelors degrees this dropped to 39% for mixed women and 15% for mixed men. This was also geographic though and the same places like the South, MD, and ATL had higher numbers though the jump was highest mostly for the mixed women.
Granted these numbers are not perfect: if a mixed person identifies only as Black (and are probably more likely to date Black) they don't show up in these numbers
6. For mixed Black-Asian women and men, they had kids with Black folks 58% and 34% of the time, a bit higher.
Now the charts
Notes as promised:
Data source is CDC Wonder Natality database, births for 2021
1. This only included counties with 100,000 people or more
2. I deliberately only included counties with at least 300 births to Black men per year for the overall Black man stats and 150 births to Black men or women with bachelors degrees. This weeded out counties with small numbers of Black folks that obviously have high IR because there is no one there.
3. I calculated the percentages based on the total of all birth certificates that had the race of the father and mother. Not all had both (see below) and were excluded.
4. I didn't do the overall Black women numbers like with Black men because the data is suspect. For all births where the Black women is the mother, about 1/3 of the birth certificates don't have the race of the father. It is hard to interpret this. For Black women with a bachelors or higher though, only 10% of the birth certificates don't have the race of the father so I feel that is more representative.
4. I took out data that was 'suppressed' due to low numbers in the database to avoid bad outliers
5. I lumped all Black folks together, including Black Hispanics, but I don't think this skews things too much
1. The Pew study in 2017 that claimed high (I still think biased towards high) levels of IR amongst Black folks that everyone repeats on the net
2. The argument on the Coli as to whether Black women's IR footprint is higher since marriage doesn't tell the whole story
So basically we can't tell who dates each other and marriage numbers have their own issues, so why not use birth data? Since about 2016 the race of the father is reported nationally so I went for this. Basically, I looked at the data of births in 2021 to mothers between 20-39 segmented by race and education.
So basically this is a study on finding where Black people date each other most and least using birth data of the parents as a proxy
I have two sets of charts below: one for births where Black men are listed as the father. I summarize the highest and lowest counties where a Black man is the father and a Black woman is the mother. Next I do the same thing but for Black men with a bachelors degree or higher. Then I show the data for Black women with a bachelors or higher who listed Black men as the father on the birth certificate. I explain at the bottom of this post why I did it the way I did. I also ran the data for biracial Black folks.
Please note, the details are at the bottom because I know some people don't give a shyt about the boring stuff
MAIN FINDINGS:
1. If births are representative, Black male and Black female IR may be somewhat elevated by Pew. I talk about this at the end of this post. Nationwide for 2021 births, 8% of births to Black women had a non-Black father and 18% of the births where a Black man is listed as the father had a non-Black mother.
2. For Black people with bachelors degrees or higher, the number for the above is 10% for Black women and 22% for Black men. Note this is substantially below the Pew estimate of 30% of Black men with college degrees marrying out (and that study was 5 years ago so those people should be having kids)
3. Black men and women in the south and prosperous mid-Atlantic counties (think MD places like PG, Charles, Howard, and parts of PA and Delaware) had kids together 90%+ of the time, this held true even for those with bachelors degrees or higher. In the highest areas (MD and ATL) it was like 95%+ for men and women
4. On the flip side, Black men and women out west, particularly in SoCal and Colorado, had very high IR rates. The lowest for Black men being Orange County. Only 48% of the kids born in Orange County in 2021 where the father is listed as Black (with a bachelors degree or higher) were with a Black woman. The same in Orange County for Black women is 79%. The lowest county for Black women with bachelors degrees was Middlesex County, MA at 76%.
5. For mixed Black folks there was a big disparity: 50% of mixed Black-White women had kids with Black men while only 21% of mixed Black-White men had kids with Black women. When the mixed persons had bachelors degrees this dropped to 39% for mixed women and 15% for mixed men. This was also geographic though and the same places like the South, MD, and ATL had higher numbers though the jump was highest mostly for the mixed women.
Granted these numbers are not perfect: if a mixed person identifies only as Black (and are probably more likely to date Black) they don't show up in these numbers
6. For mixed Black-Asian women and men, they had kids with Black folks 58% and 34% of the time, a bit higher.
Now the charts
Notes as promised:
Data source is CDC Wonder Natality database, births for 2021
1. This only included counties with 100,000 people or more
2. I deliberately only included counties with at least 300 births to Black men per year for the overall Black man stats and 150 births to Black men or women with bachelors degrees. This weeded out counties with small numbers of Black folks that obviously have high IR because there is no one there.
3. I calculated the percentages based on the total of all birth certificates that had the race of the father and mother. Not all had both (see below) and were excluded.
4. I didn't do the overall Black women numbers like with Black men because the data is suspect. For all births where the Black women is the mother, about 1/3 of the birth certificates don't have the race of the father. It is hard to interpret this. For Black women with a bachelors or higher though, only 10% of the birth certificates don't have the race of the father so I feel that is more representative.
4. I took out data that was 'suppressed' due to low numbers in the database to avoid bad outliers
5. I lumped all Black folks together, including Black Hispanics, but I don't think this skews things too much
