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Lifelines: The implications of Migrant Remittances and Transnational Elder Care for the Financial Security of Low-Income Hispanic Immigrants in the United States

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Challenges of Latino Aging in the Americas

Abstract

Research on population aging generally focuses on a particular elderly population in a specific location or context. However, a growing literature on transnationalism emphasizes that for immigrant populations, societies of origin and settlement are linked through a dense web of economic, cultural, and political connections. As such, aging in the Americas among populations shaped by immigration must consider the indelible impact of transnational ties. This paper draws on original survey data from Durham, NC to investigate the impact of remittances and transnational elder care on the financial security of low-income Hispanic immigrants. Results demonstrate not only that a large share of immigrant households in Durham routinely support parents and other elders abroad, but that the determinants of remittances to elders differ in important ways from the previous literature on undifferentiated remittances. Moreover, I document important differences in both the patterns and predictors of elder remittances between men and women, and significant interactions between gender and family structure in shaping transnational elder care. The findings suggest that the need to support aging relatives abroad is an important contributor to the precarious financial position of low-skill immigrants, with potential implications for both the inter-generational transmission of inequality and the future old-age security of immigrants themselves.

This research was supported by grant #NR 08052-03 from NINR/NIH.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A comparison of our sample with the 2000 Census showed that nearly 80 % of Durham’s Latinos live in areas similar to our targeted locales, i.e. in blocks that are 25–60 % Latino. Moreover, there were no statistically significant differences between data sources on socio-demographic characteristics such as age, employment status, hourly wages, marital status, and year of arrival (Parrado et al. 2005b).

  2. 2.

    Remittance figures are reported in constant 2007 dollars.

  3. 3.

    Since the unmarried typically do not have in-laws, the dependent variable in models for all men and women is restricted to remittances sent to the respondent’s own parents or other elderly relatives only, so as not to over-state the impact of marital status on the likelihood of remitting. The models for married respondents include support to either parent. As the number of respondents who report remitting to in-laws is small, substantive results are not sensitive to this specification.

  4. 4.

    There were too few unmarried men residing with children to estimate the impact.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locus Walk, 19104-6298, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Chenoa Flippen

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  1. Chenoa Flippen
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Correspondence to Chenoa Flippen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    William A. Vega

  2. University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Galveston, Texas, USA

    Kyriakos S. Markides

  3. The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA

    Jacqueline L. Angel

  4. School of Public Affairs, University of California. Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Fernando M. Torres-Gil

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Flippen, C. (2015). Lifelines: The implications of Migrant Remittances and Transnational Elder Care for the Financial Security of Low-Income Hispanic Immigrants in the United States. In: Vega, W., Markides, K., Angel, J., Torres-Gil, F. (eds) Challenges of Latino Aging in the Americas. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12598-5_8

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