The Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch (DBSB) supports research on the documentation, analysis, and projection of demographic composition, particularly the racial, ethnic, age, sex, and socioeconomic changes in the population.

Within the area of social and demographic studies of race and ethnicity in the United States, interests include, put are not limited to, the following:

• Causes and consequences of the changing racial and ethnic composition of U.S. society, such as:
  • How the racial and ethnic composition of the United States affected are by economic, social, and demographic factors, including intermarriage, and government policies, including immigration;
  • The implications of racial and ethnic diversity for institutions, residential patterns, and individuals' experiences, attitudes, and outcomes;
  • How the patterns of interracial and interethnic friendship, courtship, marriage, and childbearing are changing in the United States; and
  • How increasing racial and ethnic diversity is affecting population health and health disparities.
• Development, maintenance, and consequences of racial and ethnic identity, such as:
  • How racial and ethnic identities are affected by socioeconomic status, by neighborhood, school, and other contexts; factors affecting how parents assign a race to their children;
  • How immigrants to the United States categorize themselves and others racially and ethnically; how racial/ethnic identification changes as immigrants assimilate and across immigrant generations;
  • How racial/ethnic identity affect and are affected by socioeconomic and demographic outcomes;
  • How macro-level racial and ethnic composition affect individuals’ racial and ethnic identity;
  • How the increasing diversity of the U.S. population is affecting the meanings given to racial and ethnic origins and identity; and how increasing diversity is affecting the role racial and ethnic origins and identity play in organizing social life and economic opportunity.
• Conceptualizing, measuring, and modeling race and ethnicity, such as:
  • Whether the racial and ethnic classification scheme that is now being used in Federal data systems, including the 2000 Census—five racial categories plus Hispanic and non-Hispanic as described above—is meaningful and appropriate for social science research;
  • The mechanisms explaining racial and ethnic differences in social, economic, demographic, and other outcomes; how explanations for racial and ethnic differences—such as culture, racism, and social constraints—can be measured and tested; how socioeconomic and demographic processes differ for different racial and ethnic groups; and
  • Methods for conceptualizing, categorizing, and analyzing individuals of mixed race and/or ethnicity; how the method of categorizing individuals of mixed race and/or ethnicity affects the outcomes of research.

  Contact: Rebecca Clark