Kim Parker and Amanda Barroso at Pew note that Vice President Kamala Harris embodies several demographic trends:
Harris has a multiracial background. Her mother was South Asian and her father is Black. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Americans who identify as two or more races are one of the fastest growing racial or ethnic groups in the country, along with Asians. Roughly 6.3 million American adults – 2.5% of the adult population – identified as being more than one race in 2019. The number has grown significantly since the census first allowed people to choose more than one racial category to describe themselves in 2000. Among adults who identify as more than one race, relatively few (2.1%) are Black and Asian.
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Harris is the daughter of two immigrants, one from India and one from Jamaica. The share of immigrants from Asia living in the U.S. has been on the rise in recent decades, following the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. In 2018, Asians made up 28% of the U.S. foreign-born population, up from 4% in 1960. And starting as early as 2010, Asian immigrants outnumbered Hispanic immigrants among new arrivals.
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Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is White, which makes them – as a couple – part of a growing group of intermarried couples. In 2019, 11% of all married U.S. adults had a spouse who was a different race or ethnicity from them, up from 3% in 1967. Among newlyweds in 2019, roughly one-in-five (19%) were intermarried.
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When she married Emhoff – who is divorced and has two children from his previous marriage – Harris became part of a blended family. The American family has evolved considerably in recent decades, and today there is no typical “family.” In 1980, most children younger than 18 lived in a household with two married parents who were in their first marriage. By 2014, fewer than half of U.S. children lived in that type of household. Some 15% lived with parents in a remarriage, 7% lived with cohabiting parents and 26% lived with an unpartnered parent.
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Harris does not have any biological children of her own. A look at U.S. women at the end of their childbearing years reveals that 15% were childless in 2014, while the majority (85%) had given birth to at least one child. The childlessness rate was down from 20% in 2005 but still higher than the rate prior to the 1990s.
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Harris married when she was 49 years old, and while this is older than the median age at first marriage, it reflects a trend toward women and men waiting longer to get married. In 2020, the U.S. had its highest median age at first marriage on record – 28.1 for women and 30.5 for men. These numbers have crept up steadily over time. In 2000, the median age at first marriage was 25.1 for women and 26.8 for men. In 1980, the median ages were 22.0 for women and 24.7 for men.
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Harris and Emhoff are among a growing share of married adults whose spouse does not share their religion. Harris is Christian and attends a Baptist church, and Emhoff is Jewish. While most married adults in the U.S. have a spouse who is the same religion as them, that has become less common in recent decades. Among adults who were married before 1960 (and are still married), only 19% have a spouse who does not share their religion. For those married in the 1980s and ’90s, 30% are in an interfaith marriage. The share has continued to rise: 39% of adults who were married between 2010 and 2014 have a spouse who identifies with a different religious group than their own.
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Before becoming the first female vice president, Harris served as a U.S. senator. Elected in 2016, Harris joined 20 other women in the U.S. Senate in 2017. This marked a historic high for women; the number rose to 25 in 2019. Now, the Senate has 24 female members, including one Latina woman and two who are Asian-Pacific Islander. There are no Black women currently serving in the Senate. In the House of Representatives, women make up 27.3% of current members. This represents a historic high for that chamber.
