Nonmarital Childbearing and Family Structure Among Asian Americans: The Role of Socioeconomic Status, Ethnicity, and Immigration

  • RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
  • June 2026,
  • 12
  • (3)
  • 145-171;
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2026.12.3.07

Abstract

This study examines how maternal education shapes nonmarital childbearing and family structure among Asian Americans compared with non-Hispanic Whites. We also assess within-group variation by Asian ethnicity, generational status, and interracial marriage. Drawing on 2015–2019 natality data from the National Vital Statistics System and the 2013–2024 Current Population Survey Annual Socioeconomic Supplement, we find that Asian mothers, particularly South Asians, are significantly less likely than Whites to give birth outside of marriage and more likely to raise children in married, two-parent households. Also, educational gradients in these outcomes are weaker among Asians, especially among foreign-born and racially endogamous individuals, suggesting that immigrant selectivity and cultural norms moderate how socioeconomic status shapes family formation. In contrast, stronger educational differences emerge among native-born and interracially partnered Asians. These findings highlight the importance of subgroup diversity for understanding family inequality in an increasingly diverse US population.

In the United States, family formation and dissolution are increasingly patterned by socioeconomic status (SES) (Raley and Sweeney 2020; Smock and Schwartz 2020). Decades of demographic studies have shown that socioeconomic disparities in a range of family behaviors have increased, including nonmarital childbearing (Hayford et al. 2014; Wu 2017), entry into marriage (Carbone and Cahn 2015; Isen and Stevenson 2011), or marital dissolution (Killewald 2016; Martin 2006; Perelli-Harris and Lyons-Amos 2016). Among various indicators of SES, educational attainment has emerged as a particularly salient factor shaping these family behaviors, and by extension, family stability, serving as a marker of economic resources (McLanahan 2004). Since these family events play an important role in shaping children’s well-being and behavioral outcomes, studies suggest that socioeconomic divergence in family behaviors may contribute to the reproduction of inequality over generations (Lundberg et al. 2016; McLanahan 2004).

In this context, Asian Americans’ family experience has been missing from the mainstream literature compared with that of other racial-ethnic groups. A majority of studies that document changing socioeconomic patterns in family outcomes have primarily focused on Black–White differences or the Hispanic population (for simplicity, we will use “Whites” to refer to “non-Hispanic Whites,” “Blacks” to refer to “non-Hispanic Blacks,” and “Asians” to refer to “non-Hispanic Asians” throughout the rest of the text). Speculatively, the lack of interest in family outcomes among Asian Americans partially stems from relatively stable and traditional family patterns among Asians. Indeed, while studies have consistently found considerably lower divorce or nonmarital childbearing rates among Asians than Whites or other racial groups (Curtin et al. 2014; Kreider and Ellis 2011; Mayol-García et al. 2021; Oropesa and Landale 2004; Raley et al. 2015; Xie and Goyette 2004; Zhang and Van Hook 2009), the focus on socioeconomic differences across race and ethnicity did not carefully examine the case of Asians in the United States. Such family stability among Asians does not necessarily fit with the dominant theoretical debates about family changes in US sociology, where scholars have extensively examined trends, causes, and consequences of increasingly unstable American families (Brown et al. 2016; Carlson and Meyer 2014), thus not including Asian Americans into a portrait of the increasingly diversified family in America. Consequently, how Asian Americans’ family behaviors beyond divorce, such as nonmarital childbearing and two-parent families, are related to their socioeconomic backgrounds, and how such relationships or patterns differ from other racial-ethnic groups remain largely unclear despite the fact that Asian Americans are the fastest-growing population in the United States (Budiman and Ruiz 2021).

Indeed, it is likely that the well-documented socioeconomic divergence in family behaviors among other racial-ethnic groups is less significant among Asians. In other words, the strong relationships between educational attainment and family formation or dissolution—which have been observed in previous studies on other racial-ethnic groups—are weaker among Asians. This expectation originates from the so-called Asian American Achievement Paradox, which refers to second-generation Asian Americans’ high educational achievement and the weaker association between family background and children’s educational attainment among Asians than among other racial and ethnic groups (Kim 2025; Lee and Zhou 2015). There are two competing hypotheses to explain the paradox. First, the immigrant selectivity hypothesis posits that East and South Asian immigrants may benefit from selective immigration with positive characteristics (Barringer et al. 1990; Fishman 2025), while a sizable fraction of Southeast Asians came to the United States as refugees. Even if Asian immigrants are not educated by US standards, they may have higher human capital in their origin context (Feliciano and Lanuza 2017). Second, a competing perspective emphasizes the role of widely shared norms and expectations about children’s educational success among Asians, which is typically supported empirically by the weaker educational disparities in children’s educational attainment net of potential confounders (Hsin and Xie 2014; Liu and Xie 2016).

While empirical evidence for these competing hypotheses is still mixed (Kim 2025), applying these two perspectives to the case of family formation and dissolution of Asians expects us to see the weak socioeconomic differences in these outcomes among Asians. To support this speculation, studies argue that divorce and unmarried parenthood are still considered stigmatized in Asia (Guru 2009; Hertog 2009; Zhang 2020). Family demography of Asian Americans is further complicated by the fact that this population group is ethnically diverse; Asian immigrants from different origin countries are equipped with different cultural values and social norms, and they migrate to the US for different reasons and under various social backdrops (Gambol 2023; Kihara 2024; Kim 2025). All these render Asian Americans of different ethnicities distinct subgroups that deserve separate consideration. To support this speculation, for example, anecdotal evidence discusses social stigma attached to divorce among South Asian immigrant communities (Bain 2015). South Asians’ distinctive cultural norms also indicate that when examining the socioeconomic pattern in Asian Americans’ family behaviors, it is important to account for the ethnic differences within Asian Americans. Indeed, South Asians’ divorce or nonmarital childbearing rates are significantly lower than other Asian groups (Driscoll 2018; Uchikoshi et al. 2023). Despite that the Asian population has long been framed within a “model minority” (Wong et al. 1998), this perception was formed during the 1960s primarily to describe socioeconomic success among Japanese and Chinese Americans (Lee and Zhou 2015; Ramírez 2020).

This study aims to bridge the gap in the literature by examining the socioeconomic patterns in family inequality outcomes among Asian Americans and how these patterns differ from those observed among non-Hispanic Whites. We focus specifically on the relationship between educational attainment as an important indicator of SES and family outcomes associated with disadvantages. These outcomes are measured using two key indicators commonly used in demographic and sociological research: whether a child is born to an unmarried mother (nonmarital childbearing) and whether a child lives with married parents at the time of observation (family structure). Together, these measures capture both the circumstances of a child’s birth and their current household structure, allowing for consistent comparison across racial and socioeconomic groups.1 We focus on these outcomes as indicators of family instability, which refers to structural forms of family or transitions that disrupt the continuity of children’s living environments, including parental separation, divorce, single parenthood, or repeated repartnering. While not unstable by definition, nonmarital childbearing, which refers to childbirth outside of marriage, is also widely recognized as a marker and potential precursor of such instability, as nonmarital unions are more likely to dissolve than marital ones (Musick and Michelmore 2015; Rackin and Gibson-Davis 2012). As such, we treat nonmarital births as part of the broader constellation of family arrangements that increase the likelihood of instability over the life course. Importantly, studies have found that both nonmarital childbearing are associated with poorer maternal health (Williams et al. 2011) and adverse outcomes for children, including behavioral problems and reduced well-being (Forehand et al. 1998; McLanahan et al. 2013). Robust evidence also shows that family structure shapes children’s cognitive development (Carlson and Corcoran 2001; McLanahan et al. 2013). Together, these outcomes have implications for social inequality and intergenerational mobility (McLanahan 2004).

Drawing on 2015–2019 natality data from the National Vital Statistics System and the 2013–2024 Current Population Survey Annual Socioeconomic Supplement, we guide our analyses by the following questions: Are educational gradients in nonmarital childbearing and family structure weaker for Asians than non-Hispanic Whites, and is there any heterogeneity among Asians by ethnicity, generational status, or interracial union? In this study, we use the term “educational gradient” as shorthand for the relationship between education and family outcomes, and a greater gradient means a stronger relationship between educational attainment and family outcomes.

Our analysis reveals that Asian Americans exhibit significantly higher family stability than Whites, as evidenced by lower rates of nonmarital childbearing and a higher likelihood of children living with two married parents. These patterns are especially pronounced among South Asians and are largely explained by the high prevalence of foreign-born individuals within Asian populations, for whom educational attainment plays a smaller role in shaping family outcomes. Educational gradients in nonmarital childbearing and family structure—sharp among Whites—are much flatter among Asians, particularly among the foreign-born and those in racially endogamous unions. However, these racial and ethnic differences diminish among native-born parents, suggesting that generational status and acculturation, including interracial union, play key roles in moderating the relationship between education and family formation behaviors. Together, these findings point to the importance of immigrant selectivity and cultural practices in shaping patterns of family stability among Asian Americans. These results contribute not only to the literature on racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic differences in family formation but also to the sociological literature on the bifurcation of family formation in the United States. This study also illustrates the utility of the diversity approach in comprehensively understanding the demographic portrait of increasingly diversified American families.

SOCIOECONOMIC BACKGROUND, RACE-ETHNICITY, AND FAMILY INEQUALITY IN THE US

Family behaviors, especially those linked to family stability and instability, are shaped by SES, which is a key predictor. Previous studies show that a range of indicators associated with family instability, including early marriage, divorce, nonmarital childbirth, or single-parent family, are significantly stratified by parental socioeconomic status (McLanahan 2004; McLanahan and Jacobsen 2015). Such socioeconomic bifurcation in family behaviors and instability has also been increasing in the past five decades (Furstenberg 2014; McLanahan 2004; McLanahan and Jacobsen 2015). For example, Steven P. Martin (2006) estimated that 38 percent of women with no high school education who married between 1975 and 1979 experienced marital dissolution within ten years, while 28 percent of college-educated women in the same marriage cohort did so. The gap increased for women who married between 1990 and 1994, with the probability of divorce within ten years since marriage reaching 46 percent for women with no high school education versus 16 percent for women with a college education. As unstable and non-intact families are traditionally viewed as less capable of providing children with sufficient resources, scholars have speculated that the growing socioeconomic bifurcation in family behaviors will result in growing developmental gaps among children from different socioeconomic backgrounds in the US and reproduce social inequality over generations (Kearney 2023; McLanahan 2004).

Besides socioeconomic backgrounds, race-ethnicity has been another focal point discussed in the existing literature. Similar to socioeconomic resources, family behaviors associated with instability are increasingly patterned by race-ethnicity (Raley et al. 2015; Sweeney and Phillips 2004; Rosenfeld and Roesler 2024). A recent study by Michael J. Rosenfeld and Katharina Roesler (2024), for example, estimates that the cumulative marriage survival rate for Black wives dropped from 63 percent for marriages formed in the 1990s to 49 percent for those formed in the 2000s. By contrast, marital rates among White wives remained stable; the ten-year marriage survival rate was 69 percent for marriages in the 1990s and 71 percent for those in the 2000s. However, compared to the socioeconomic disparities, our understanding of racial-ethnic variation in family behaviors and outcomes remains limited. Compositional differences in characteristics associated with the risk of these behaviors, such as age at marriage or educational background, do not fully account for the observed racial disparity (Guzzo et al. 2015; Su and Addo 2018; Sweeney and Phillips 2004). As Karen Benjamin Guzzo and Sarah R. Hayford (2020: 124) note in their recent review of racial-ethnic differences in family outcomes, we need more research “to understand differences in fertility behaviors and outcomes across—and within—race-ethnic groups and immigrant generations.”

Recent studies have begun to realize that socioeconomic backgrounds and race-ethnicity can interact to shape family outcomes in the United States (Cross 2020; Cross et al. 2022; Guzzo and Hayford 2020; Rosenfeld and Roesler 2024). For example, Rosenfeld and Roesler (2024) examined socioeconomic correlates of marital dissolution in the United States, where they found that the relationship between education and the risk of marital dissolution is weaker among the non-White population. Potential mechanisms for such and other racial differences in family behaviors, or the so-called racial moderation hypothesis, include differential returns to marriage by race and ethnicity (Manning and Brown 2006; Shapiro et al. 2013), a social acceptance of diverse family forms among racial-ethnic minorities (Heard 2007; Manning and Brown 2006), or differential exposure to discrimination and disadvantages across racial and ethnic groups (Cross et al. 2022). Nonetheless, previous studies that consider the interplay of race-ethnicity and socioeconomic status in shaping family behaviors and instability have mostly focused on evaluating the impacts of disruptive events and life stresses associated with socioeconomic resources and comparing the Black and Hispanic populations with the White population.

SOCIOECONOMIC DISPARITIES IN FAMILY BEHAVIORS AMONG ASIAN AMERICANS

Although many studies examine racial and ethnic disparities in family behaviors, Asian Americans remain comparatively understudied. When they are included, most analyses take a reductionist approach, focusing on average group differences between Asians and Whites in marriage, fertility, and dissolution (Curtin et al. 2014; Kreider and Ellis 2011; Mayol-García et al. 2021; Oropesa and Landale 2004; Osterman et al. 2024; Raley et al. 2015; Xie and Goyette 2004; Zhang and Van Hook 2009). These studies have consistently found that Asian Americans exhibit relatively stable family behaviors, including delayed fertility, lower divorce rates, and a higher likelihood of marriage.

Empirical efforts to examine socioeconomic variation in these outcomes within the Asian American population have been more limited. One notable exception is the work by economist Melissa S. Kearney (2023, 31–33), who found that Asian children are the most likely among major racial-ethnic groups to live with married parents, and that the difference by maternal education, while present, is much smaller among Asians than among Whites, Hispanics, or Blacks. The gap is especially pronounced among children of less-educated mothers: even when mothers have only a high school diploma or less, Asian children are significantly more likely to live in two-parent households.

Kearney interprets this pattern as reflecting the influence of “a strong cultural norm” (Kearney 2023, 36) surrounding family structure, supported by cross-national data showing lower rates of single parenthood in many Asian countries. Indeed, the emphasis on cultural values is a common explanation for Asian Americans’ distinctive family patterns. This is paralleled by findings in the study of social mobility; many scholars argue that widely shared expectations around children’s educational attainment among Asians, regardless of social class, can reduce the influence of parental socioeconomic status on educational outcomes (Goyette and Xie 1999; Liu and Xie 2016; Tran 2015; Lee et al. 2024). These cultural expectations may, in turn, promote marital stability, especially given the higher exit costs of marriage compared to nonmarital unions (Lundberg et al. 2016). Thus, if there exists a normative emphasis on educational success and intergenerational mobility across socioeconomic strata among Asians, we would expect weaker educational differences in family behaviors associated with child well-being, such as nonmarital childbearing, early fertility, and union dissolution.

An alternative but complementary explanation for patterns of stability among Asian American families emphasizes the role of structural factors, particularly immigrant selectivity, shaped by changes in US immigration law after 1965 (Yang 1999). Positive immigrant selectivity refers to the phenomenon in which immigrants arrive in the United States with higher educational attainment than those who remain in their country of origin (Feliciano 2005). Expanding this, Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou (2015) introduced the concept of hyper-selectivity, where an immigrant group is doubly selected—not only better educated than nonmigrants in their home country but also more educated than the average US population. Asian immigrants, particularly those who migrated after 1965, are disproportionately represented in this hyper-selected category, often entering through highly selective employment-based visa pathways (Feliciano 2005; Jasso et al. 2000).

While the concept of hyper-selectivity was originally developed to explain the distinctive educational outcomes of Asian Americans, it may also help explain why Asian American families tend to exhibit stability regardless of parents’ educational attainment. Hyper-selectivity creates community-level advantages, such as dense ethnic networks, high levels of coethnic human capital, and norms that promote interdependence and long-term investment in the future (Lee and Zhou 2015; Zhou 2008). These structural advantages enable the development and reinforcement of group-based resources and behavioral norms, such as the cultural construction of a “success frame,” which prizes delayed gratification, stable family structures, and disciplined child-rearing.

Crucially, because these resources and norms are community-based rather than individually derived, they may extend to less-educated coethnics within hyper-selected groups. As such, even working-class Asian immigrant families may benefit from ethnic capital—in the form of social expectations, parenting norms, and institutional support such as tutoring centers, community associations—that help buffer against the family instability typically associated with socioeconomic disadvantage. Therefore, hyper-selectivity offers a theoretical basis to expect family stability across class lines within Asian American populations, as community-driven structures and expectations mitigate the impacts of individuals’ limited socioeconomic resources.

Taken together, these perspectives suggest that Asian families are, regardless of ethnicity, more stable than their White counterparts and that class-based disparities in nonmarital childbearing and family structure may be smaller among Asians.

Hypothesis 1: On average, Asian children are (a) less likely to be born to unmarried mothers and more likely to live with married parents than White children, and (b) the educational gradient in these family outcomes is smaller for Asian children than for their White counterparts, regardless of Asian ethnic subgroup.

DIVERSITY AMONG ASIAN AMERICANS: ETHNICITY, GENERATIONAL STATUS, AND INTERMARRIAGE

Significant variation exists within the Asian American population in the United States, shaped by factors such as ethnicity, generational status, and patterns of interracial union. This section reviews relevant literature and motivates the development of three hypotheses.

Ethnic Heterogeneity

The category “Asian American” encompasses a broad range of ethnic groups, including but not limited to East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian populations. Originating as a political identity during the civil rights era (Espiritu 1993), the term obscures substantial variation in migration histories, cultural practices, and socioeconomic outcomes (Omi and Winant 2014; Zhou and Lee 2017). These differences have important implications for both educational and family outcomes. For example, East and South Asian groups—such as Chinese, Indian, and Korean Americans—are characterized by higher levels of parental education and immigration to the United States through selective employment or student visa pathways, which reflect positive immigrant selectivity (Feliciano 2005; Lee and Zhou 2015). They also tend to emphasize intergenerational mobility through education and uphold stronger cultural expectations around marriage and family cohesion (Kao and Thompson 2003; Lee et al. 2024; Liu and Xie 2016).

By contrast, many Southeast Asian groups—such as Cambodian, Hmong, and Laotian Americans—arrived as refugees and face greater structural disadvantages, which make their educational patterns more akin to other racial-ethnic minorities (Ngo and Lee 2007; Wu 2002; Zhou and Bankston 1998). These divergent migration histories shape group-level resources and norms. Hyper-selectivity, which is characterized by selective educational profiles and strong community cohesion, is primarily observed among East and South Asians (Lee and Zhou 2015; Gambol 2023), whereas Southeast Asian groups are less likely to benefit from these protective mechanisms (Gavigan 2021; Model 2020). If group-level sociocultural institutions or community norms that facilitate status attainment among less resourceful groups are limited in South Asian immigrant communities, family outcomes among Southeast Asians may be more sensitive to socioeconomic status. In contrast, the presence of such institutions and norms may buffer against socioeconomic gradients among East and South Asians. Given these differences in cultural norms, migration pathways, and structural disadvantages, we expect that the association between maternal education and family outcomes will vary across Asian subgroups. Specifically, East and South Asians may exhibit more stable family patterns across education levels due to positive educational selection through high-skilled migration and stronger community norms around marriage and family stability, while family outcomes among Southeast Asians may be more stratified by socioeconomic status.

Hypothesis 2: The difference in nonmarital birth rates or the prevalence of children living with married mothers between less- and more-educated groups will be smaller for East and South Asian children than for Southeast Asian children.

Generational Status and Immigrant Selectivity

Generational status is another critical axis of diversity within the Asian American population. While Asian Americans are frequently treated as a monolithic group, their experiences are deeply shaped by whether they or their parents were born in the United States. A large body of research indicates that foreign-born individuals tend to maintain more stable family structures than their US-born counterparts (Jensen and Chitose 1994; Landale and Oropesa 2007; Min 2002; Wang 2021; Zhang and Van Hook 2009). These patterns are attributed to immigrant selectivity, the idea that those who migrate are not a random sample of their origin countries, but tend to be positively selected on attributes such as ambition, work ethic, and family orientation (Feliciano 2005). In this framework, immigrants are more likely to adhere to cultural norms that emphasize marriage and two-parent family formation (Wang 2021; Wong 2002), and often delay union formation due to extended educational or occupational preparation in a new destination (Glick et al. 2006).

These distinctive patterns of family formation and stability among immigrants are also consistent with classical assimilation theory, which views intergenerational shifts in family behavior as a product of acculturation to mainstream norms (Gordon 1964). In the case of Asian American family formation, generational differences may be especially salient because the group includes a high proportion of foreign-born parents. First-generation and even 1.5 generation parents may bring with them stronger cultural and institutional commitments to marriage and family cohesion, which could buffer against the socioeconomic gradients typically observed in family instability. In contrast, native-born Asian Americans may experience greater exposure to less familistic norms, delayed or nonmarital childbearing, and diverse family forms. As such, the strength of the association between education and family structure may differ significantly by generational status.

Thus, we expect that generational status will not only confound but also moderate the relationship between education and family structure. If immigrant selectivity and cultural continuity play a stabilizing role, educational gradients in nonmarital childbearing and family structure should be less pronounced among the children of foreign-born Asian parents.

Hypothesis 3: Educational differences in nonmarital births and family structure are less pronounced among children of foreign-born Asian parents than among those of US-born parents.

Interracial Union and Cultural Negotiation

Interracial union represents a further axis of assimilation and heterogeneity, particularly salient among the US-born second generation. Approximately one-third of Asian newlyweds marry outside their racial group—most often Whites—and rates are even higher among the native-born (Livingston and Brown 2017; Qian and Qian 2020). This phenomenon is also gendered: Asian women are more likely than Asian men to marry outside their race (Xie and Goyette 2004). According to classical assimilation theory (Gordon 1964), intermarriage with Whites represents an advanced stage of assimilation, often associated with the adoption of mainstream cultural norms. Studies suggest that interracial couples are different from racial-ethnic endogamous couples in terms of childbearing patterns (Choi and Goldberg 2018) or family instability (Bratter and King 2008; Choi and Goldberg 2021; but see Zhang and Van Hook 2009). However, more recent qualitative work complicates this view. For instance, Marguerite Lengyell and Nic M. Weststrate (2025) demonstrate that interracial parenting often involves heightened racial consciousness and active negotiation of parenting norms. These findings suggest that interracial families may navigate family life in distinct ways—characterized by mutual learning and active negotiation of values—compared to endogamous Asian couples, where homogeneous family norms between spouses reinforce stability. This leads us to expect the following hypothesis.

Hypothesis 4: The educational differences in nonmarital birth rates and family structure among Asians are weaker among racially endogamous unions than among interracial unions.

DATA AND METHOD

A careful investigation of the socioeconomic pattern in Asian Americans’ family behaviors, and how these patterns differ from other racial-ethnic groups, complicates broader theoretical understanding of the potential role of race-ethnicity in shaping family inequality. The case of educational differences in family outcomes associated with “pattern of disadvantage” helps researchers understand how cultural values, immigration patterns, and socioeconomic status shape stratification outcomes. To this end, this study focuses on two outcomes, namely, nonmarital childbearing and family structure, which allow us to examine distinctive yet complementary aspects of family formation and stability. The first outcome captures the marital context at the time of the child’s birth. This is a critical starting point for understanding later family trajectories, as it reflects norms and decisions around marriage and fertility timing. The second outcome captures the subsequent evolution of those family arrangements. A child may be born to unmarried parents but later live in a married-couple household, or vice versa. Therefore, family structure at the time of the survey reflects the accumulation of union formation and dissolution over time. These differences allow us to evaluate not only initial conditions but also later transitions in family structure.

For the analysis of nonmarital childbearing, we use the data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), 2015–2019, which is published annually by the National Center for Health Statistics and provides information on all registered births in the United States. We specifically use the Vital Statistics Natality Birth Data from the NVSS, as provided by the National Bureau of Economic Research. We restricted our sample to the first live births born to mothers aged eighteen to forty-nine whose residence is in the United States.2 For the analysis of family structure, we use the Current Population Survey Annual Socioeconomic Supplement (CPS-ASEC), 2013–2024.3 The analytic sample was restricted to households with children aged twelve or younger. For both analyses, we focus on the comparison between non-Hispanic Whites and non-Hispanic Asians.

The dependent variables of interest are whether the marital status reported by mothers is unmarried or married (for NVSS) and children’s family structure (two parents, married; two parents, cohabiting; unpartnered parent) (for CPS-ASEC). As we discussed earlier, the focus on nonmarital childbearing and family structure is theoretical but these outcomes are also chosen for a practical reason. Specifically, it is not easy to compare Asians’ family behavior with other population groups or examine the within-race diversity among Asians due to their relatively smaller population size. To address this issue, this study uses data from the NVSS and the CPS-ASEC, which allow us to conduct detailed analyses of educational-ethnic differences in nonmarital childbearing and family structure among Asians as compared with Whites.

The main predictors are the mother’s race-ethnicity and educational level. For ethnic differences among Asians, groups include South Asian, East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), Southeast Asian (Filipino and Vietnamese), and Other Asian.4 For educational level, we use mother’s highest degree or level of school completed (at the time of the delivery for NVSS and at the time of the survey for CPS-ASEC). This variable is based on four categories, including less than a high school degree or GED (less than high school), high school degree or GED (high school), some college or associate degree (some college), and bachelor’s degree or higher (bachelor of arts). Lastly, the immigrant generation is constructed as follows: For both NVSS and CPS-ASEC, we use the mother’s generational status to distinguish between foreign-born and native-born mothers. The final sample size is 4,161,369 for NVSS (452,805 for Asians and 3,708,564 for Whites) and 54,881 for CPS-ASEC (4,964 for Asians and 49,917 for Whites).

The descriptive statistics are shown separately between Whites and Asians in table 1. As expected, sociodemographic characteristics are different for these two groups. Specifically, mothers are more educated and older among Asians than among Whites. We can also see differences in the two focal family outcomes. Compared to Whites, Asian mothers tend to be married when the first child is born and less likely to be single parents. These group-level differences may be attributed to compositional differences between the two groups, such as educational level or mother’s age. The subsequent analysis examines how race-ethnicity and socioeconomic status, measured as educational level, interactively shape these family outcomes.

View this table:
Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics

We estimate the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing using logistic regressions as a function of race-ethnicity, educational level, and other covariates. First, we estimate models of the functional form, where the outcome (nonmarital childbearing or family structure) is predicted by race-ethnicity and mother’s educational level, where we diversify the Asian category by considering Asian ethnicity, with other potential confounders including survey year, parents’ generational status, and region.5 Next, model 2 examines a potential interaction between race-ethnicity and educational level. Lastly, model 3 examines differences by generational status by estimating model 2 separately for those who are foreign-born and native-born.

RESULTS

This section presents our main results on nonmarital childbearing and family structure. We first report the regression estimates, followed by predicted values derived from these models.

Nonmarital Childbearing

Table 2 presents logistic regression models assessing the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing among Whites and four Asian ethnic groups. Consistent with prior research, results from model 1 indicate that Asian mothers are significantly less likely than White mothers to give birth outside of marriage. South Asians show the largest difference, followed by East and Southeast Asians. Specifically, South Asians are 8.5 times (1/exp(−2.138)) less likely to experience nonmarital childbearing, followed by East Asians (1.9 times, 1/exp(−0.638)) and Southeast Asians (1.26 times, 1/exp(−0.229)) who are also less likely to experience nonmarital childbearing than Whites. These results are consistent with both hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2.

View this table:
Table 2.

Logistic Regression Results Predicting Nonmarital Childbearing Among Whites and Asians

Model 2 adds interaction terms between race-ethnicity and maternal education, allowing us to examine whether educational gradients in nonmarital childbearing differ across groups. Among Whites, lower education is strongly associated with higher odds of nonmarital childbearing. In contrast, the association is weaker among Asians—particularly at the lower end of the educational spectrum—supporting the hypothesis that education matters less for family formation behaviors among racial minorities. These patterns remain robust in model 3, which controls for generational status.

To explore the role of nativity more explicitly, table 3 disaggregates the sample by mothers’ generational status. South Asians continue to show significantly lower odds of nonmarital childbearing than their White counterparts for both foreign-born and native-born mothers (−1.312 and −0.493, respectively). For other groups, the patterns are more variable. For foreign-born mothers with some college education, East Asians and Other Asians tend to have a slightly lower chance of nonmarital childbearing than Whites, but the size of the coefficient is smaller than that of South Asians. For native-born mothers with some college education, the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing is not statistically different between East Asians and Whites, while native-born Other Asians have a higher chance of nonmarital childbearing than Whites. Southeast Asians, notably, exhibit higher rates of nonmarital childbearing than Whites in both generational groups (0.238 and 0.447, respectively).

View this table:
Table 3.

Logistic Regression Results Predicting Nonmarital Childbearing Among Whites and Asians by Generational Status

These interaction effects highlight how generational status moderates the relationship between education, race-ethnicity, and nonmarital childbearing. If educational differences in nonmarital childbearing are smaller among Asians than Whites, we should see negative coefficients for the interaction between Asian ethnicities and lower education (less than high school or high school education) and positive coefficients for the interaction between Asian ethnicities and higher education (BA+). Results indicate that this pattern is observed only for native-born South Asians. For other ethnic and generational status groups, we do not see clear patterns consistent with the expectation.

Figure 1 presents the predicted marginal probability of nonmarital childbearing based on model 2 in table 2 and table 3, which reinforces these findings. The first panel is based on models presented in table 2, and the second and third panels are based on results presented in table 3. Looking at the first panel, we can see educational level matters less for nonmarital childbearing among all Asian ethnicities than among Whites. This is driven by weaker educational gradients in nonmarital childbearing among non-college-educated Asians compared to their White counterparts. Non-college-educated Asians’ weaker educational gradients are also the case for Southeast Asians, East Asians, and Other Asians.

Predicted Probabilities of Nonmarital Childbearing for Whites and Four Asian Ethnic Groups by Generational Status Source: NVSS 2015–2019. Note: HS = high school. BA+ = bachelor’s degree or higher.
Figure 1.

Predicted Probabilities of Nonmarital Childbearing for Whites and Four Asian Ethnic Groups by Generational Status

Source: NVSS 2015–2019.

Note: HS = high school. BA+ = bachelor’s degree or higher.

Meanwhile, the second and third panels show how race-ethnicity and education shape nonmarital childbearing vary by generational status. Among foreign-born mothers, educational differences in nonmarital childbearing are minimal across all racial-ethnic groups, including Whites.6 In contrast, educational gradients are steeper among native-born mothers, although still somewhat attenuated among South Asians compared to Whites. Still, the proportion of nonmarital childbearing is larger compared to foreign-born mothers, where the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing is negligibly low regardless of educational level. This suggests that the muted role of education in shaping family behaviors among Asians is largely driven by the high prevalence of immigrants, whose family formation patterns appear less responsive to socioeconomic differences. These results are consistent with hypothesis 3.

The pronounced generational differences among Asians suggest that acculturation to American family norms shapes family formation patterns. As we discussed earlier, one key dimension of acculturation is interracial union formation, which may alter the influence of education on family outcomes. In particular, the within-Asian difference between South Asians and other groups of Asians may reflect their distinct family patterns characterized by the larger prevalence of racial endogamy. To test this expectation, we examine within-Asian variation in nonmarital childbearing and family structure by disaggregating this population not only by generational status but also by racial pairings. To this end, we create a dummy variable that indicates one if the mother’s race is the same as the father’s.

Figure 2 shows the predicted probability of nonmarital childbearing among Asian mothers by generational status and racial pairings. Foreign-born, endogamously partnered mothers have consistently low rates of nonmarital births across education levels. In contrast, among native-born and/or interracially partnered mothers, nonmarital birth rates are higher and more responsive to educational differences. This result indicates that the lower rate of nonmarital childbirth among the foreign-born population is driven by the fact that they are likely to marry endogamously, which suppresses educational differences. The gap is especially pronounced among less-educated South and East Asian mothers, where interracial unions are associated with substantially higher probabilities of nonmarital childbearing than endogamous ones. Interestingly, regardless of being foreign- or native-born, endogamous South Asian mothers are least likely to experience nonmarital childbearing across educational levels, which suggests that racial endogamy and specific family expectations are closely tied together in South Asian communities. In such an environment, regardless of immigrant background, individuals are socially expected to experience a set of family formation patterns, which includes marriage to someone of the same ethnicity and marital fertility.

Predicted Probabilities of Nonmarital Childbearing for Four Asian Ethnic Groups by Generational Status and Racial Intermarriage Source: NVSS 2015–2019. Note: HS = high school. BA+ = bachelor’s degree or higher.
Figure 2.

Predicted Probabilities of Nonmarital Childbearing for Four Asian Ethnic Groups by Generational Status and Racial Intermarriage

Source: NVSS 2015–2019.

Note: HS = high school. BA+ = bachelor’s degree or higher.

Family Structure

We next examine the relationship between maternal education and children’s living arrangements, focusing on differences between Asian and White families. Figure 3 presents the distribution of family structure by mother’s race-ethnicity, educational level, and generational status. Among White families, maternal education is strongly associated with stable family arrangements: the likelihood of children living with two married parents increases steadily with education. For example, about one in four children live in a single-parent White family if their mothers did not complete high school, while the share of single-parent households is less than 10 percent for those who completed college. In contrast, family structure among Asians is more uniform across education levels, particularly among South and East Asians. The difference is mainly due to the smaller (or larger) prevalence of single parents (or married two parents) among the less-educated Asians than that among their White counterparts. For example, among mothers who have received a high school education, 93 percent of South Asian children live with two married parents, compared to only 64 percent among Whites. These results are consistent with both hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2.

Distribution of Family Structure by Race-Ethnicity and Generational Status Source: CPS-ASEC 2013–2024. Note: LTHS = less than high school. HS = high school. SC = some college. BA+ = bachelor’s degree or higher.
Figure 3.

Distribution of Family Structure by Race-Ethnicity and Generational Status

Source: CPS-ASEC 2013–2024.

Note: LTHS = less than high school. HS = high school. SC = some college. BA+ = bachelor’s degree or higher.

Stratifying by nativity, we find that educational gradients in family structure are minimal among foreign-born mothers, regardless of race. Children of foreign-born Asian mothers are especially likely to live in married two-parent households across all education levels. For foreign-born mothers whose educational level is high school, for example, 83 percent of children of White mothers are living with married two-parent families, while 95 percent of South Asian and 87 percent of East Asian counterparts do so. For college-educated mothers, children are less likely to live with one parent, both for Whites and Asians (88 percent for Whites versus 97 percent for South Asians or 91 percent for East Asians).

Among native-born mothers, however, we observe stronger educational gradients in family structure for both Asians and Whites. Compared to children of foreign-born mothers, children of native-born Asian mothers are more likely to live with unmarried parents or single parents. Still, some Asian groups—especially South Asians—show greater family stability than Whites at comparable education levels, although small sample sizes in the CPS-ASEC limit conclusions for the least educated subgroups.7

Table 4 presents regression results predicting the likelihood of living with two married parents. Model 1 confirms that children of Asian mothers are more likely than those of White mothers to reside in married-parent households, with the strongest effects for South and Other Asians. According to model 2 where we add interactions between Asian ethnicities and maternal education, we can see that educational gradients are much weaker among Asians than Whites—especially for East and Southeast Asians—indicating that lower education does not correspond to the same drop in family stability. For East, Southeast, and Other Asians, the interaction coefficients with less than high school or high school education are positive and statistically significant, which offsets the negative coefficients of the main education effects. Smaller educational differences are particularly evident for East Asians. The interaction coefficient is also positive for South Asians, but their relatively larger standard error reflects relatively fewer cases of those who went to high school or less. Results are robust to including the mother’s nativity status in model 3.

View this table:
Table 4.

Logistic Regression Results Predicting Married Two Parents Among Whites and Four Asian Ethnic Groups

In table 5, we separate the models by generational status. Among foreign-born mothers, we find flat or inconsistent educational gradients for Asians, while White families continue to show more predictable associations between education and family structure. Compared to mothers with some college education (reference category), children of White mothers whose education is less than high school are 1.58 times (1/exp(−0.463)) less likely to live with two married parents, while children of White mothers whose education is BA+ are 1.6 times (exp(0.467)) more likely to live with two married parents. Compared with these results, we can see that the likelihood of living with two married parents is not clearly patterned by maternal education among Asians. For East and Other Asians, interactions with less than a high school education are positive and statistically significant, which offsets the negative main effect of mother’s lower education. This indicates that children of East Asian and Other Asian mothers with less than high school education are more likely to live with two married parents than children whose mother’s education is some college. In general, however, a majority of interaction coefficients are not statistically significant, possibly due to small sample issues.

View this table:
Table 5.

Logistic Regression Results Predicting Married Two Parents Among Whites and Four Asian Ethnic Groups by Generational Status

Among native-born mothers, steeper gradients emerge for all groups, although differences between Asians and Whites are smaller. Children of White mothers with less than high school education are 1.97 times (1/exp(−0.678)) less likely to live with two married parents, while children of mothers with college education are 3.1 times (exp(1.133)) more likely to do so than those whose mothers have some college education. Again, similar to foreign-born mothers, interaction coefficients are largely non-significant, suggesting that educational gradient patterns are similar between children of White and Asian mothers among native-born mothers.

Figure 4 presents predicted probabilities based on model 3 for each of table 4 (the first panel) and table 5 (the second and third panels), which illustrate these patterns. Looking at the first panel, educational gradients in family structure defined by married two-parent families are significantly weaker among Asian ethnic groups than among Whites. This figure also shows that the predicted probabilities of two married parents among less than high school, high school, and some college graduates are almost identical for South Asians. Meanwhile, gradients are much steeper for Whites. Looking at the second and third panels, these Asian–White gap results are largely explained by considering the mother’s generational status. Among foreign-born mothers, children of Asian mothers are consistently more likely to live with married parents, regardless of education, than those of White mothers. Some educational gradients appear among Whites and Southeast Asians, while they are much flatter for South, East, and Other Asians.

Predicted Probabilities of Two Married Parents Among Whites and Four Asian Ethnic Groups by Generational Status Source: CPS-ASEC 2013–2024. Note: Error bars indicate 95 percent confidence intervals. Predicted values with fewer than twenty cases are dropped. HS = high school. BA+ = bachelor’s degree or higher.
Figure 4.

Predicted Probabilities of Two Married Parents Among Whites and Four Asian Ethnic Groups by Generational Status

Source: CPS-ASEC 2013–2024.

Note: Error bars indicate 95 percent confidence intervals. Predicted values with fewer than twenty cases are dropped. HS = high school. BA+ = bachelor’s degree or higher.

Among native-born mothers, however, the racial gap narrows, and family structure becomes more responsive to maternal education across all ethnicities. These findings suggest that the high family stability observed among Asians is largely attributable to the prevalence of immigrants, whose family behaviors appear less sensitive to socioeconomic variation, consistent with hypothesis 3. On average, immigrant families tend to be stable. Since a large fraction of Asian parents are immigrants, this explains Asians’ relatively stable family structure. Meanwhile, education level matters more for family structure among native-born parents, regardless of whether they are Asian or White. Since a large fraction of White parents are non-immigrants, this explains the steeper educational gradients in family structure among Whites.

Figure 5 presents results where we consider the role of racial endogamy and exogamy. For this analysis, we distinguish children living with two married parents by the mother’s endogamy status. We estimate the probability using multinomial logistic regression. Since a majority of Asian groups are foreign-born (see table 1), results from all samples and those from foreign-born samples are substantially similar. Across most Asian groups, foreign-born, endogamous mothers are highly likely to live with a spouse, regardless of education. Among interracial couples, however, education is more predictive of whether children live with two married parents. These results help us to understand the seemingly U-shaped patterns between mother’s educational level and family structure for Asians, particularly foreign-born Asians; family structure tends to be stable for racial endogamous couples, while educational level is positively associated with two married parents for interracial couples. Overall, these patterns suggest that racial endogamy reinforces stable family norms, while interracial unions may expose families to more variable expectations and structural influences, making family outcomes more contingent on socioeconomic resources, consistent with hypothesis 4.

Predicted Probabilities of Family Structure and Racial Intermarriage for Four Asian Ethnic Groups by Generational Status Source: CPS-ASEC 2013–2024. Note: Error bars indicate 95 percent confidence intervals. Predicted values with fewer than twenty cases are dropped. HS = high school. BA+ = bachelor’s degree or higher.
Figure 5.

Predicted Probabilities of Family Structure and Racial Intermarriage for Four Asian Ethnic Groups by Generational Status

Source: CPS-ASEC 2013–2024.

Note: Error bars indicate 95 percent confidence intervals. Predicted values with fewer than twenty cases are dropped. HS = high school. BA+ = bachelor’s degree or higher.

DISCUSSION

Drawing on nationally representative data from the NVSS (2015–2019) and the CPS-ASEC (2013–2024), this study examined how educational gradients in two outcomes associated with family instability—nonmarital childbearing and family structure—differ between non-Hispanic Whites and Asians. Our analyses revealed three key findings. First, consistent with prior research, we find that Asian American mothers are significantly less likely than White mothers to give birth outside of marriage and are more likely to raise children in married, two-parent households. These patterns hold across ethnic subgroups but are particularly pronounced among South Asians, followed by East Asians and Southeast Asians. Second, we found that the relationship between maternal education and these two outcomes is markedly weaker among Asians than among Whites. While White families exhibit steeper educational gradients, where lower education strongly predicts higher rates of nonmarital childbearing and nonmarital family arrangements, these gradients are significantly flatter among Asians. Third, the muted relationship among Asians is largely explained by immigrant generational status and racial endogamy. Foreign-born Asian mothers, especially those in racially endogamous unions, show negligible differences in family outcomes across education levels. In contrast, native-born Asians and interracial couples exhibit patterns more aligned with those of White families, including steeper educational gradients.

Although the current data do not allow us to disentangle alternative mechanisms, these results lend support to theoretical perspectives emphasizing the enduring role of cultural norms and immigrant selectivity. On the one hand, the current results are consistent with our expectation that widely shared cultural norms among Asians that emphasize the role of family in children’s socioeconomic success may help stabilize marital unions and reduce socioeconomic disparities in family behavior among Asians (Lundberg et al. 2016). Research shows that Asian Americans, across social classes, widely share expectations for children’s high educational attainment as a strategy for upward mobility (Goyette and Xie 1999; Liu and Xie 2016; Tran 2015; Lee et al. 2024), which may explain weaker educational gradients in outcomes associated with family stability compared to Whites or other racial-ethnic groups. On the other hand, the muted role of education among foreign-born Asians is consistent with the hypothesis that positively selected immigrants may benefit less resourceful Asians through the spillover of mobility-promoting culture (Hsin 2016) or cultural norms that prioritize family stability, leading to Asians’ hyper-selectivity argument (Lee and Zhou 2015, but see Kim and Kim 2023). The persistence of low nonmarital birth rates and high marital stability even among the least-educated foreign-born Asians suggests that the community-level resources and expectations fostered by hyper-selectivity help buffer against family instability (Zhou 2008). In particular, the absence of educational gradients among South Asians illustrates how cultural stigma surrounding nonmarital fertility and high rates of racial endogamy may reinforce shared family norms, even in the context of acculturation (Bain 2015; Portes 2003).

The observed variation across Asian ethnic subgroups highlights the importance of disaggregating the Asian American population when examining family behaviors and their relationship to socioeconomic status. While all Asian subgroups show higher rates of family stability compared to Whites, the magnitude and pattern of educational gradients differ by ethnicity. These differences likely reflect variation in migration histories, cultural norms, and patterns of endogamy. For instance, South Asians exhibit uniformly high family stability across education levels, suggesting the role of strong cultural stigma surrounding nonmarital fertility and high levels of racial endogamy (Bain 2015). In contrast, Southeast Asians tend to show slightly steeper educational gradients, possibly due to different structural constraints and community resources. East Asians fall somewhere in between. This heterogeneity complicates any single narrative about Asian American family life and underscores how ethnicity, nativity, and interracial union intersect to shape family inequality and disparities. These findings also suggest that ethnic-specific community structures and cultural expectations can mediate or buffer the influence of socioeconomic status on family behaviors, reinforcing the need for nuanced, intra-group analyses in family research (Guzzo and Hayford 2020).

These patterns also complicate the predictions of the diverging destinies framework (McLanahan 2004), which has been widely used to describe the bifurcation of family behaviors by socioeconomic status. This framework accurately characterizes White families, where education strongly predicts family stability and child well-being. In contrast, our results indicate that it does not fully capture the experience of Asian Americans. Family formation among Asians, especially immigrants or endogamous unions, is associated with stability across the socioeconomic spectrum, suggesting that cultural and structural factors beyond individual socioeconomic status matter in shaping these family outcomes. It should be noted, however, that these protective patterns may weaken over generations. Among native-born Asians and those in interracial unions, educational gradients in family outcomes more closely resemble those of Whites, indicating that acculturation and structural incorporation may erode the group-level buffers against family instability.

We recognize that there are several critical limitations in this study. One of them is that the NVSS data do not allow us to distinguish nonmarital childbirth from cohabiting mothers, which accounts for a majority of nonmarital childbearing in the United States (Lichter et al. 2014; Wu 2017), from cohabiting mothers to unpartnered mothers. The distinction is critical since the acceptability of childbearing within cohabiting unions has been growing, which is likely a main driver of the increase in nonmarital childbearing among college-educated individuals (Cherlin 2021). This suggests that nonmarital childbearing among cohabiting couples is increasingly similar to childbearing among married couples and thus may not be negatively associated with child well-being. Importantly, the share of cohabiting parents and unpartnered mothers is different across race-ethnicity and socioeconomic status (Kim and Raley 2015; Lichter 2012; Wu 2017). This study also could not distinguish between never-married and divorced parents. This distinction is important since children of divorced mothers are more likely to have involvement with fathers than children of never-married mothers (Carlson 2006). Although the NVSS data do not allow such a distinction, more research is thus needed to understand the mechanisms of significantly weaker educational gradients in nonmarital childbearing among Asians.

Additionally, this study does not provide a formal analysis of mechanisms that lead to the observed pattern—which awaits future investigation. In particular, it is critical to consider the role of migration processes. First, while the current interpretation of the Asian–White between-group residual differences as an indication of the racial and ethnic variation in shared norms and expectations assumes that Asians in America, especially recent immigrants, share similar norms and expectations with those in their origin contexts, the pattern we observed among Asians can be explained by the migration process per se (Van Hook and Glick 2007). To account for the role of the migration process, cross-national comparisons between US-based Asian immigrants and their origin-country counterparts could help clarify whether observed patterns are due to migration selectivity or transposed cultural values. Second, the national-level Asian–White comparison may not be appropriate as the spatial distribution of Asians is different from other racial-ethnic groups and has been changing (Kye 2023). For example, more than half of Asians live in the ten richest metro areas while only 15 percent of Whites do so (Manduca and Furey 2026, this issue). It can also be the case that the impact of norms shared among the coethnics is further intensified through social cohesion in immigrant communities (Borjas 1992; Portes 2003; Smith 2024). Future studies thus benefit from a careful research design that considers the role of geography in explaining the Asian–White gap.

An important limitation of this study is that we are unable to distinguish between biological and stepparents in our analysis of family structure using the CPS-ASEC. This distinction is theoretically meaningful, as research shows that biological ties between parents and children are associated with greater stability and child well-being (Manning 2015). However, this limitation is particularly pronounced for our focus on Asian Americans, who represent a relatively small share of CPS respondents. The low prevalence of nonmarital childbearing and divorce among Asians suggests that stepfamilies are likely rare in this population. For example, nationally, only 3 percent of children born to married parents experience parental remarriage by age twelve (Brown et al. 2016), and this proportion is plausibly even lower among Asians. Combined with small sample sizes, these factors make it difficult to produce reliable estimates of variation by biological relationship to children within the Asian population. Nevertheless, this remains an important area for future research, particularly for understanding the diversity of family experiences beyond traditional two-parent married households. Similarly, while our analysis combines cohabiting and single-parent families into a single “non-intact” category, we recognize that these arrangements are distinct and may have different implications for child well-being. Due to the small number of non-intact families among Asians in our sample, particularly among immigrants, we were unable to reliably estimate differences between these groups. Future research with larger or more targeted samples could explore these distinctions in greater depth, especially in light of changing family norms among younger and US-born Asian populations.

Our analysis adopts two indicators of family stability, namely, nonmarital childbearing and two-parent, married households, which have been widely used to examine implications for child well-being. However, we recognize that these measures are not neutral. Existing studies in family demography often treat marital stability as a proxy for child well-being, but this framing can obscure important questions about women’s experiences and agency within these unions. In particular, for women in immigrant or culturally conservative communities, staying in a marriage may involve substantial gendered costs, including limited autonomy, social pressure, or the endurance of unequal or harmful relationships (Espiritu 2001). While our findings are based on heterosexual families, future studies should include nonheterosexual families to provide further insights. Future research should also explore the quality and meaning of marital stability from the perspective of women and other marginalized family members, particularly across lines of race, nativity, and class.

Despite these limitations, this study contributes to the prior literature on racial, ethnic, and educational differences in family instability in two important ways. First, empirically, this is the first study to provide evidence of racial and ethnic variation in the educational gradient of family stability, with a particular focus on Asian Americans. Second, theoretically, it challenges the presumed universality of diverging destinies by showing that the interplay between socioeconomic status and family formation is contingent on cultural, generational, and marital contexts. Understanding sources and mechanisms of population heterogeneity is a fundamentally important question for improving demographic theories (Xie 2000). Findings from this study call for greater attention to within-group variation and the intersecting roles of race, immigration, and socioeconomic status for a nuanced understanding of Asian Americans’ family stability.

FOOTNOTES

  • ↵1. While alternative measures—such as parental cohabitation, union duration, or transitions in family structure—can provide further nuance, the focus on marital status reflects its enduring significance in shaping children’s socioeconomic outcomes and access to resources (McLanahan and Percheski 2008; Musick and Michelmore 2015). In this context, higher rates of children living with married parents and lower rates of nonmarital births are interpreted as proxies for greater family stability.

  • ↵2. Note that the NVSS 2015 data do not include births that occurred in Connecticut and New Jersey. For other years, all births in the fifty states and the District of Columbia are included.

  • ↵3. We included these years because the Asian ethnicity question has been asked since the 2013 survey.

  • ↵4. NVSS started including options for six specific Asian subgroups, which include Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, in 2003 for those who self-identified as Asians (Driscoll 2018). The 2003 revision also includes a nonspecific Asian category, Other Asian (Specify). The publicly available data do not allow us to disentangle the Other Asian category.

  • ↵5. For NVSS data, the public use data do not include detailed geographic information including state or county.

  • ↵6. It should be noted that among the least-educated group (less than high school graduates), the rate of nonmarital childbearing is lower for Whites than Southeast Asians or East Asians. Most White immigrants to the United States comprise those from Europe, while the share of immigrants from the Middle East has also increased (Read and Fairfax 2025). Although NVSS data do not allow us to examine country of origin, the relatively lower likelihood of nonmarital childbearing as well as weaker educational difference may reflect that these White immigrants also carry different cultural norms.

  • ↵7. For those native-born South Asians, the sample size is small (fewer than twenty cases) for all education groups except for the BA+ group.

Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

Vol. 12, Issue 3

1 Jun 2026

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    Nonmarital Childbearing and Family Structure Among Asian Americans: The Role of Socioeconomic Status, Ethnicity, and Immigration
    • RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
    • Jun 2026,
    • 12
    • (3)
    • 145-171;
    • DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2026.12.3.07

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Keywords

nonmarital childbearing, family structure, race-ethnicity, education, immigration, Asian Americans