Data in Action: The Association Between Racial Composition in State of Residence and Racial Identification Among A Cohort with Only One Asian Indian Parent in the United States
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Data in Action: The Association Between Racial Composition in State of Residence and Racial Identification Among A Cohort with Only One Asian Indian Parent in the United States
March 19, 2026
Presenter:
Luna Chandna, Portland State University
Population projection models often assume that people identified as Multiracial in childhood will continue to identify as Multiracial in adulthood. However, racial self-identification continues to develop over the lifecourse, and is both fluid and context-dependent. An important contextual factor to consider when studying the racial identification of people with multiracial backgrounds is the racial composition of where they live. Using restricted data from Census 2000 and Census 2020, I link the racial identification responses in childhood and in adulthood for a cohort of individuals who have only one Asian Indian parent and use logit regression models to study the association between their racial identification and the racial composition in their state of residence. I find that the share of White and the share of Asian population in the state of residence are significant predictors of corresponding identifications for people who have only one Asian Indian parent and who are born between 1990 and 2000. This work uniquely contributes to the literature about the understudied association between racial identification and the racial demographics of place, and has implications for policy makers, population scientists, and the projected browning rate of America.
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Bio:
Luna Chandna, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Scholar with the Population Research Center at Portland State University. She holds a PhD in Sociology, with a focus on Demography from Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on the measurement of race and ethnicity, and changes in individual identification over the life course. She is interested in studying the predictors and processes by which the changes occur, and what the changes mean for the social outcomes of different groups. Her postdoc work focuses on using parental and individual characteristics to accurately predict the changing racial and ethnic population of Oregon. |