Living race together: the role of partner's race in racial/ethnic differences in smoking

ABSTRACT

Objective: Crossing racial lines provides a unique context for understanding racial patterns in smoking. This research explores whether adults whose unions cross racial lines behave more similarly to their own group or their partner's

Design: Using a sample of respondents from the National Health Interview Survey (2001–2011), we compare the likelihood of current smoking and quitting smoking among adults in mixed-race unions to adults in same-race unions.

Results: Adults with different-race partners generally mirror their partner's group; people of color with White partners have a higher likelihood of being current smokers, similar to Whites, while Whites partnered with Asians and Latina/os are, like other Asians and Latino/as, less likely to smoke. There are fewer differences in the likelihood of quitting smoking.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• interracial unions
• smoking
• health behaviors
• racial gaps
• intimate relationships
• United States

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Christa Mason, Layton Field, and Ellen Whitehead for invaluable research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Mary Campbell http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6125-191X

Jarron Saint Onge http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0914-4882

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Social Science Research Institute at Rice University and support from the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the University of Pennsylvania Colloquium Series and as a poster at the Population Association of America.