Using the 1990 U.S. census data, we apply log‐linear models to examine Asian Americans' interracial marriage with whites and interethnic marriages between Asian ethnic groups. Japanese and Filipino Americans are most likely to marry whites, followed by Chinese and Korean Americans. Southeast Asian and Asian Indian Americans are least likely to marry whites. We further explore how interracial marriage differs by couples' educational and nativity combinations. The impact of educational attainment, generally, is very strong but is modest for Japanese Americans, the most assimilated group, and for Southeast Asian Americans, the least assimilated group. Interracial marriage is more likely for native than for immigrant couples, but immigrants marrying natives are more likely to marry whites than persons of their own ethnic group. Interethnic marriage between Asian ethnic groups is limited to several ethnic groups, but is much more frequent among natives than among immigrants. Japanese and Chinese Americans, who have lived in the United States for several generations, have the highest rate of interethnic marriage. We have shown two forms of integration for Asian Americans – integration into mainstream society through interracial marriage for both immigrants and natives and integration into Asian American pan‐ethnicity through interethnic marriage for later‐generation natives.

This paper examines how school engagement influences the timing of family formation for youth. We pay particular attention to variation across four racial/ethnic groups and by generation status, variation that reflects the diversification of U.S. society through immigration. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), we employ discrete-time multinomial logistic regression models examining the likelihood of childbearing or marriage in late adolescence. We find that the delaying effects of school enrollment and engagement vary by race/ethnicity, suggesting that strategies for socioeconomic success that focus on delaying family roles are more important among some groups than others. The results also indicate that controlling for school enrollment and school engagement reduces differences in early marriage and non-marital childbearing by generation status.