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“Ethnic Variations in Characteristics of First Unions” 209
cohabitation and the outcome of first cohabiting union across Asian
ethnic groups. To the author’s knowledge, this issue has never been
explored in any existing studies
—
a topic that cannot be looked at
with the widely-used census data for examining ethnic differentials
in union characteristics of Asian Americans. Second, the detailed
information on cohabiting and marital partners collected in Add
Health also facilitates the investigation of ethnic variations in
inter-racial/ethnic partnering patterns of Asian Americans. This is
also an unanswerable question in prior studies that utilized the
census or American Community Surveys to study Asian American
families. If interracial partnering with whites is an indicator of
social distance between minority groups and the mainstream society,
East Asian Americans appear to be the most integrated group
among all Asian immigrants. Overall, the results here suggest the
importance of new data collection efforts to incorporate large
samples of Asian Americans that are representative of the diverse
immigrant population in both generational and ethnic terms. A
wider array of family characteristics and demographic indicators
should also be included so that researchers can acquire a clearer
picture of post-immigration adaptations for this fast-growing
minority group in the United States.