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Fifty years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws against interracial wedding, interracial partners tend to be more common than ever before before—especially in metropolitan areas.

That’s a finding from the new report from the Pew Research Center taking a look at the state of interracial wedding today. Overall, there’s been a dramatic increase in interracial marriage. In 2015, 10 percent of all married Americans were married to some body of a various battle or ethnicity. That’s up from simply 3 % in 1980. Seventeen percent of all weddings performed in 2015 were interracial, up from 7 % in 1980.

In towns, those numbers are even higher. In 2015, 18 per cent of the latest marriages in metropolitan areas were interracial, compared with 11 per cent of newlyweds outside of urban centers. The rates were greatest in Honolulu (42 percent), Las Vegas (31 percent), and Santa Barbara ( 30 percent). Intermarriage is rarest in metro areas in southern states (Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and the Carolinas), along with two metro areas in Pennsylvania. Jackson, Mississippi, and Asheville, North Carolina, tie at 3 per cent for the lowest share of intermarried newlyweds.

Intermarriage is increasingly typical in component because of changing attitudes race that is concerning as well as in component to the growing share of Asian-American and Hispanic people in america. Rates have actually steadily increased since 1967, as soon as the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia ruling barred states from outlawing interracial wedding.

Although 11 % of white newlyweds are now hitched to some body of a various battle or ethnicity, white folks are nevertheless minimal likely of all of the major racial or cultural groups to intermarry. Black newlyweds, meanwhile, have experienced the absolute most dramatic increases of any team, from 5 percent in 1980 to 18 percent today.

The space between metropolitan and areas that are non-metropolitan however, “is driven entirely by whites,” according to your report. “Hispanics and Asians are more likely to intermarry when they reside in non-metro areas.” For black people, metropolitan living doesn’t appear to make a difference: their intermarriage prices hang constant at 18 per cent in metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas alike. The interactive map associated the report shows the huge variation in intermarriage prices over the U.S. by metro area.

When it comes to describing this divide that is urban-rural there are lots of possible facets. Public perception of intermarriage might play a role: 45 percent of adults in cities say that “more people of various events marrying each other is a thing that is good culture,” the study reports. Thirty-eight per cent of these in residential district areas state the exact same. Only 24 per cent of people surviving in rural areas agreed with that statement.

Variations in racial composition of metropolitan and populations that are non-metropolitan also account fully for some of the gap: 83 per cent of newlyweds in non-metro areas are white, compared to 62 percent in metro areas. Hispanics and Asians, regarding the other hand, constitute 26 per cent of newlyweds in metro areas and only 10 percent in non-metro areas—and they’re much more likely than white individuals to marry outside their cultural groups.

“Part of it is about numbers,” says Pew senior researcher Gretchen Livingston, a co-author associated with report. “The pool of prospective partners in cities into the U.S. tends to be a bit more diverse regarding race and ethnicity than the pool in rural areas, to ensure that fact in and of it self increases the chances of intermarriage.”

Livingston cites the example of Honolulu, where 42 % of newlyweds are intermarried therefore the population is 42 percent Asian, 20 percent white, and 9 percent Hispanic. It really is such a mix, with no racial or ethnic group counts for more than half of the pool,” she says“If you look at the breakdown of the marriage market there.

Las vegas and Santa Barbara follow a comparable pattern. That suggests the variety associated with the wedding market, but during the other end of this spectrum, Livingston claims,“the whole tale is not as clear.”

One one hand, Asheville, vermont, where just 3 per cent of newlyweds are intermarried and 85 percent of the populace is white, fits with the idea that diversity—or absence thereof—drives intermarriage rates. “But regarding the other hand, Jackson, Mississippi, is fairly diverse, you will find relatively high shares of both whites and blacks into the marriage market, yet intermarriage is very low there, at 3 per cent,” Livingston claims. “I can’t understand for sure exactly what explains that, but we do know that acceptance of intermarriage does tend to be lower in the Southern and in the Midwest, and I suspect that might be playing a task there.”