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Recent Trends in Coverage of the Mexican-Born Population of the United States: Results From Applying Multiple Methods Across Time

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Demography

Abstract

The accuracy of counts of U.S. racial/ethnic and immigrant groups depends on the coverage of the foreign-born in official data. Because Mexicans constitute by far the largest single national-origin group among the foreign-born in the United States, we compile new evidence about the coverage of the Mexican-born population in the 2000 census and 2001–2010 American Community Survey (ACS) using three techniques: a death registration, a birth registration, and a net migration method. For the late 1990s and first half of the 2000–2010 decade, results indicate that coverage error was somewhat higher than currently assumed but had substantially declined by the latter half of the 2000–2010 decade. Additionally, we find evidence that U.S. census and ACS data miss substantial numbers of children of Mexican immigrants, as well as people who are most likely to be unauthorized: namely, working-aged Mexican immigrants (ages 15–64), especially males. The findings highlight the heterogeneity of the Mexican foreign-born population and the ways in which migration dynamics may affect population coverage.

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Notes

  1. In general, coverage error, r, is a function of the size and coverage error of its subgroups: r = 1 – {1/[p 1 / (1 – r 1) + p 2 / (1 – r 2)]}, where p 1 and p 2 are the proportions, and r 1 and r 2 are coverage error rates for subgroups 1 and 2. If coverage error is 0 % among legally resident Mexicans and 30 % among the unauthorized, and 45 % are unauthorized, then the minimum coverage error for all Mexican-born = .16 = 1 – {1 / [.45 / (1 – .30) + .55]}.

  2. Eschbach et al. (2006) reported Californian mortality rates for Hispanics by nativity. We used these rates to convert mortality rates for all Hispanics to mortality rates for the Hispanic foreign-born as follows: M x, foriegn-born = M x, Hispanics / [p + (1 – p) / r], where M x, Hispanics is the age-specific mortality rate for Hispanics estimated by Arias (2010), p = the proportion foreign-born among the Hispanic population age x, and r = the ratio of foreign-born to native-born mortality rates, provided by Eschbach et al. (2006).

  3. Children age a at last birthday in year t were actually born in two different years (t – a and t – a – 1), so we averaged births across both years.

  4. One complication is that the time between Mexican censuses is never exactly five years, so five-year cohorts cannot be followed neatly across censuses. The 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010 Mexican censuses were conducted in November 1995, February 2000, October 2005, and February 2010, respectively. For intercensal periods longer than five years, we adjusted the survival ratios to account for both longer exposure and differential mortality risk across three age categories, and we allocated the survivors proportionately across the next two older age intervals. For intercensal periods shorter than five years, we adjusted the survival ratios to account for the shorter and differential exposure to mortality risk across two age categories, and we allocated the survivors proportionately across the same and next older age intervals.

  5. Hill and Wong (2005) provided alternative estimates of net migration while varying assumptions of coverage error in Mexican census data, but they did not provide an independent assessment of coverage error in Mexico.

  6. One might expect the coverage error rate to be even closer to zero among this group. However, we did not factor in emigration to countries other than Mexico, which could account for some of the discrepancy between the expected and ACS estimated numbers. Additionally, these results are consistent with recent research suggesting growing levels of coverage error among young U.S. children of all racial and ethnic groups, possibly because of time constraints of parents with young children and young children’s increasingly complex living arrangements (O’Hare 2013).

  7. We used the mother-child identifiers provided by Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) (Ruggles et al. 2010).

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Acknowledgments

This research benefited from grants from NICHD (P01 HD062498, RC2 HD064497) and the Science and Technology Directorate of DHS through the BORDERS Research Center at the University of Arizona, as well as from support from the Population Research Institute of Pennsylvania State University (R24HD041025) and the Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy at the University of California–Irvine. We express thanks to Agustín Escobar-Latapí, Michael Hoefer, Jeffrey Passel, and Nancy Rytina for advice and consultation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Population Research Institute and Department of Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University, 601B Oswald Tower, University Park, PA, USA

    Jennifer Van Hook

  2. University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Frank D. Bean

  3. Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    James D. Bachmeier

  4. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Catherine Tucker

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  1. Jennifer Van Hook
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  2. Frank D. Bean
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Correspondence to Jennifer Van Hook.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 10 Annual net migration estimates for Mexican-born by age and sex (1,000s), based on Mexican data, U.S. data, and difference
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Van Hook, J., Bean, F.D., Bachmeier, J.D. et al. Recent Trends in Coverage of the Mexican-Born Population of the United States: Results From Applying Multiple Methods Across Time. Demography 51, 699–726 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-014-0280-2

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