Campbell, Mary E., and Jennifer Eggerling-Boeck
Working paper no. 2003-10
Abstract
This paper uses the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the social and psychological well-being of multiracial adolescents. Using three different measures of multiracial identity, we investigate the ways in which these adolescents compare to their monoracial counterparts on the outcomes of depression, seriously considering suicide, feeling socially accepted, feeling close to others at school, and participating in extracurricular activities. We find that multiracial adolescents do experience some negative outcomes, with considerable variation across different multiracial groups. We find no consistent evidence, however, that multiracial adolescents face more difficulty in adolescence than members of other racial and ethnic minority groups.