Does early childhood exposure to students of other races impact whether an adult will be more likely to take part in interracial relationships later in life? A forthcoming paper in the Journal of Labor Economics explores this question, which is particularly relevant for the United States where interracial partnership is still rare (less than 8% of married blacks intermarry with whites).

In “More than just friends? School peers and adult interracial relationships,” authors Luca Paolo Merlino, Max Friedrich Steinhardt, and Liam Wren-Lewis use the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, which collected information on family background, health behaviors, friendships, and romantic relationships from US students in grades 7-12 in 1994-1995 and then followed up over a decade later to survey a sample of these students on their romantic partners.

The authors find that more black peers of the same gender lead whites to have more relationships with blacks as adults, and that a higher share of black students in a grade stimulates diversity in social interactions both within and outside the classroom. “This is not simply the result of students having more potential black partners in school, since the peer groups which impact adult relationships are students of the same sex in the same grade,” the authors write. They find that the higher the share of black students of the same gender in a grade, the more likely a white student is to have a black partner during adulthood.

The authors also find that an increase in meeting opportunities is unlikely to explain the likelihood of increased interracial relationships, since the effect is persistent across time, space, and social networks.

Overall, interracial contact during childhood has important individual long-term behavioral consequences, including on discrimination and decisions regarding relationships. While the findings do not impact labor market outcomes, there are significant effects on reported racial attitudes. These findings suggest that diversity in social interactions lead to students who are, as adults, less likely to think that race is an important factor within a relationship. “Our results enhance the understanding of how exposure to racial diversity can reduce the degree of assortativity by race in dating and marriage through a change in attitudes,” the authors write, which indicates that policies designed to increase racial diversity in schools could reduce racial prejudices and encourage social integration.

Founded in 1983 as the first journal devoted specifically to labor economics, the Journal of Labor Economics (JOLE) presents international research on issues affecting social and private behavior, and the economy. JOLE’s contributors investigate various aspects of labor economics, including supply and demand of labor services, personnel economics, distribution of income, unions and collective bargaining, applied and policy issues in labor economics, and labor markets and demographics.