Poverty and program participation among immigrant children

Future of Children

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 247-266

  Borjas, George J ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; ARTICLE; CHILD; CULTURAL FACTOR; HUMAN; MIGRATION; POVERTY; SOCIAL CARE; SOCIAL WELFARE; STATISTICS; UNITED STATES;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; CHILD; CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISON; EMIGRANTS AND IMMIGRANTS; HUMANS; POVERTY; PUBLIC ASSISTANCE; SOCIAL WELFARE; UNITED STATES; YOUNG ADULT;

EID: 79953081607     PISSN: 10548289     EISSN: 15501558     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/foc.2011.0006     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. Barry Edmonston and Jeffrey S. Passel, "Immigration and Immigrant Generations in Population Projections," International Journal of Forecasting 8, no. 3 (1992): 459-76.
2. Classic expositions of the melting-pot hypothesis are given by Robert Park, Race and Culture (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1975);
3. Milton Gordon, Assimilation and American Life (Oxford University Press, 1964).
4. Recent empirical studies include George J. Borjas, "Long-Run Convergence of Ethnic Skill Differentials: The Children and Grandchildren of the Great Migration," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 47, no. 4 (1993): 553-73;
5. Richard D. Alba, Amy Lutz, and Elena Vesselinov, "How Enduring Were the Inequalities among European Immigrant Groups in the U.S.?" Demography 38, no. 3 (2001): 349-56;
6. Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou, "The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530 (1993): 74-96.
7. Some of the conflicting evidence is surveyed by Min Zhou, "Segmented Assimilation: Issues, Controversies, and Recent Research on the New Second Generation," International Migration Review 31, no. 4 (1997): 825-58.
8. There are a number of excellent reviews of this literature. See, in particular, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Greg J. Duncan, "The Effects of Poverty on Children," Future of Children 7, no. 2 (1997): 55-71;
9. Greg J. Duncan and others, "How Much Does Childhood Poverty Affect the Life Chances of Children?" American Sociological Review 63, no. 3 (1998): 406-23;
10. Robert Haveman and Barbara Wolfe, "The Determinants of Children's Attainments: A Review of Methods and Findings," Journal of Economic Literature 32, no. 4 (1995): 1829-78.
11. A Ctrends and implications for policy is given by Kristin Anderson Moore and others, "Children in Poverty: Trends, Consequences, and Policy Options," policy brief, Child Trends 2009-11 (Clearwater, Fla.: JWB Children's Services Council of Pinellas County, Florida, April 2009) (www.aboutpinellaskids.org/childpoverty/Child%20Poverty%20Brief.pdf).
12. Greg J. Duncan, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, "Income Effects across the Life Span: Integration and Interpretation," in Consequences of Growing Up Poor, edited by Greg J. Duncan and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997), pp. 596-610.
13. There is a debate about whether it is poverty itself or other variables correlated with poverty (such as not having enough books in the household or inferior child care) that generates the correlation between poverty and a host of poor socioeconomic outcomes.
14. Susan B. Meyer, What Money Can't Buy: Family Income and Children's Life Chances (Harvard University Press, 1997).
15. Lorraine V. Klerman, "The Health of Poor Children: Problems and Programs," in Children and Poverty: Child Development and Public Policy, edited by A. Huston (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 136-57;
16. Sanders Korenman and Jane E. Miller, "Effects of Long-Term Poverty on Physical Health of Children in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth," in Consequences of Growing Up Poor, edited by Duncan and Brooks-Gunn, pp. 70-99 (see note 4).
17. A study that specifically examines whether the poverty status of immigrant children influences mental health, although in the Canadian context, is Morton Beiser and others, "Poverty, Family Process, and the Mental Health of Immigrant Children in Canada," American Journal of Public Health 92, no. 2 (2002): 220-27.
18. Mary E. Corcoran, and Ajay Chaudry, "The Dynamics of Childhood Poverty," Future of Children 7, no. 2 (1997): 40-54;
19. Thomas P. Vartanian, "Adolescent Neighborhood Effects on Labor Market and Economic Outcomes," Social Service Review 73, no. 2 (1999): 142-67;
20. Robert M. Hauser and Megan M. Sweeney, "Does Poverty in Adolescence Affect the Life Chances of High School Graduates?" in Consequences of Growing Up Poor, edited by Duncan and Brooks-Gunn, pp. 541-95 (see note 4).
21. A very small fraction of children with mixed parents were born outside the United States (3.3 percent in 2009). Because of the small sample size, the birthplace distinction within the population of mixed-parent children is ignored in the discussion that follows.
22. In addition to the age restriction, a "child" cannot be a household head or the spouse of a household head.
23. There is remarkably little intermarriage across national origin groups among parents of immigrant children: only about 10 percent of immigrant children have parents belonging to different national origin groups, and this fraction was very stable during the period. Specifically, the intermarriage rate among the parents of immigrant children was 10.5 in 1994 and 10.3 percent in 2009.
24. The income used to calculate the household's poverty status includes cash assistance but does not include the value of food stamps or Medicaid.
25. Evidence on the beneficial outcomes resulting from the expansion of Medicaid coverage of children is given by Janet Currie and Jonathan Gruber, "Health Insurance Eligibility, Utilization of Medical Care, and Child Health," Quarterly Journal of Economics 111, no. 2 (1996): 431-66.
26. George J. Borjas, "Welfare Reform and Immigration," in The New World of Welfare: An Agenda for Reauthorization and Beyond, edited by Rebecca Blank and Ron Haskins (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2001), pp. 369-85;
27. Michael Fix and Jeffrey S. Passel, Trends in Noncitizens" and Citizens" Use of Public Benefits following Welfare Reform: 1994-97 (Washington: Urban Institute, 1999).
28. Some differences in outcomes appear among mixed-parent children (assuming that the child is assigned to the ethnic group of the foreign-born parent), but these differences are much smaller than the ones observed existing among immigrant children.
29. Because the proportion of mixed-birthplace children is small, the results are not sensitive either to the alternative methodology of allocating national origin according to the birthplace of the father or to the simple elimination of these children from the analysis.
30. Eligibility rules for refugees differ dramatically from the rules that apply to other immigrants and could influence program participation rates for children from countries, such as Vietnam, with high numbers of refugees. In particular, the eligibility of refugees for public assistance is not affected by the citizenship status of the child or the parents. The different eligibility rules for refugees and nonrefugees are sure to play a much greater role in the post-PRWORA period.
31. The data reported in table 1 can also be used to determine the presence of "cohort effects," where the cohorts refer to different year-of-birth cohorts. (Note that this definition of cohorts differs from that traditionally used in the immigration literature, which defines immigrant cohorts by calendar year of migration rather than by calendar year of birth.) The evidence on the direction of these cohort effects is mixed, however. For example, the poverty rate is about 12.1 percentage points higher for immigrant children born abroad in 1994-97 than for comparably aged natives in 1998-99, when the children are around four years old. In contrast, the relative poverty rate for immigrant children born in 1999-2002 is 6.3 percent when they are four years old; for the cohort born in 2004-07 it is 10.4 percent when they are four years old.
32. Wendy Zimmermann and Karen C. Tumlin, "Patchwork Policies: State Assistance for Immigrants under Welfare Reform," Occasional Paper 24 (Washington: Urban Institute, 1999), table 18;
33. Karen C. Tumlin, Wendy Zimmermann, and Jason Ost, State Snapshots of Public Benefits for Immigrants: A Supplemental Report to "Patchwork Policies," Occasional Paper 24 supplemental report (Washington: Urban Institute, 1999).
34. In particular, the regression analysis relates the dependent variable to a set of linear fixed effects, including the time period under analysis, whether the child is a child of mixed-parentage or an immigrant child, and whether the state is a generous state. The regression analysis then includes all two-way interactions among these variables, and a three-way interaction between the immigration status of the child, the state generosity index, and the time period. The effects reported in table 2 give the estimated coefficient of the three-way interaction variable.
35. Excellent discussions of the consequences of growing up in single-parent households are given by Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein, Making Ends Meet: How Single Mothers Survive Welfare and Low-Wage Work (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997);
36. Sara McLanahan and Gary D. Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Harvard University Press, 1994).
37. George J. Borjas, "The Intergenerational Mobility of Immigrants," Journal of Labor Economics 11, no. 1, part 1 (1993): 113-35.
38. The pooling of three different CPS cross-sections generates a larger sample size for each of the ethnic groups, allowing for a more precise measurement of the underlying correlation. In addition, the ethnic groups are defined by collapsing the five-digit coding provided by the original data into a three-digit coding. Further, all immigrant children, regardless of where they were born, are pooled into the same ethnic groups using the methodology outlined here.
39. The regression line weights each ethnic group by the number of observations used to calculate the mean outcome for the group in the pooled 2007-09 CPS data.
40. The correlation between the program participation rate of immigrant children and the participation rate observed thirteen years later when they become young adults persists even after one adjusts for differences in educational attainment across groups. The regression coefficient linking the welfare participation rate over time is 0.358 (with a standard error of 0.090) if the model adjusts for differences in the educational attainment of the ethnic groups (with the educational attainment measured as of 2007-09). It seems, therefore, as if exposure to public assistance programs during the childhood years has an independent effect on the program participation rate of young adults even after one adjusts for the intergenerational human capital transfers that inevitably take place. Note, however, that the educational attainment of the group is an imperfect measure of the human capital of the group, and hence this type of model cannot be used to differentiate conclusively between the two alternative hypotheses that can explain the persistence of the outcomes illustrated in figure 6.