Abstract
This study examines how familial contexts affect poverty disparities between the children of immigrant and U.S.-born blacks, and among black and nonblack children of immigrants. Despite lower gross child poverty rates in immigrant than in U.S.-born black families, accounting for differences in family structure reveals that child poverty risks among blacks are highest in single-parent black immigrant families. In addition, within two-parent immigrant families, child poverty declines associated with increasing assimilation are greater than the respective declines in single-parent families. The heads of black immigrant households have more schooling than those of native-black households. However, increased schooling has a weaker negative association with child poverty among the former than among the latter. In terms of racial disparities among the children of immigrants, poverty rates are higher among black than nonblack children. This black disadvantage is, however, driven by the outcomes of first-generation children of African and Hispanic-black immigrants. The results also show that although children in refugee families face elevated poverty risks, these risks are higher among black than among nonblack children of refugees. In addition, the poverty-reducing impact associated with having an English-proficient household head is about three times lower among black children of immigrants than among non-Hispanic white children of immigrants.
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Notes
One implication of using this definition is that it may not account for variations in poverty in immigrant families with different numbers of immigrant parents. This issue is an important one. In this study, however, the focus is limited to how the children of immigrants in general compare with the children of the U.S.-born and on racial disparities among the former.
According to these data, about 92% of all young children in black immigrant families are black.
The ethnic origin of the household head is used if both the household head and spouse in two-parent households are immigrants with different ethnic origins. This occurs in only about 5% of all immigrant households.
In order to limit the possible attrition effects associated with information on the years of arrival of immigrants who arrived in the United States in earlier decades, my indicator of refugee status focuses only on immigrants arriving in the five-year period preceding the 2000 census, that is, recent refugees.
To emphasize racial differences among the children of immigrants, dummy variables for black and non-Hispanic white children are among the race dummy variables whose main effects are estimated in these models. This facilitates the use of interaction terms to illustrate variations in the impacts of factors such as living in refugee families and parental human capital among black and white children of immigrants. Hispanic white children are, therefore, the omitted category in models in the second stage of the analysis.
Supplementary analyses reveal that the 50% refugee cutoff point (based on the total immigrant arrivals divided by total refugee arrivals) used to identify refugees is fairly robust. Accordingly, when a similar model was estimated using a 25% cutoff for the refugee variable, the estimated coefficient was 1.67 (p < .001). The respective coefficient was 1.76 (p < .001) when a 75% cutoff point was used.
Chi-square tests of the difference between the first-generation children of African and Hispanic black immigrants indicate that the disparity between the two is statistically significant (χ2 = 46.3, p < .001).
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Acknowledgments
This project was supported with a grant from the U.K. Center for Poverty Research through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Grant No. 2 U01 PE000002-07. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author and should not be construed as representing the opinions and policies of the UKCPR or any agency of the Federal government.
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Thomas, K.J.A. Familial Influences on Poverty Among Young Children in Black Immigrant, U.S.-born Black, and Nonblack Immigrant Families. Demography 48, 437–460 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0018-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0018-3