Children of immigrants: National and state characteristics

Immigrant Children and Child Welfare in the United States: Demographics, Legislation, Research, Policy, and Practice Impacting Public Services

“…Children of immigrants are significantly more likely to live in poverty than children of native parents and are at significant risk of poor outcomes in a number of other factors. Working immigrant families with children are twice as likely as working non-immigrant families to have incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level, and overall, 51% of children of immigrants live below the poverty level, compared with 35% of children of U.S.-born parents (Fortuny et al 2009). Contributing to this economic hardship, 26% of children of immigrants have parents with less than a high school education, compared to only 8% of children of U.S.-born parents, and 61% of children of immigrants have at least one parent with limited English proficiency (Fortuny et al 2009).…”

“…As of 2008, foreign-born immigrants comprised 12.6% of the total U.S. population (U. S. Census Bureau 2008), while children of immigrants represented more than onefifth of all children under 18. Since 1990, the number of children with at least one immigrant parent has more than doubled, from 8 million to 16.4 million in 2007, while their share of all children increased from 13% to 23% (Fortuny et al 2009). …”

“…Together, these states account for 67% of all children of immigrants in the United States. However, along with increased immigration flows and changes in immigration patterns since the 1990s, the number of children with immigrant parents has more than doubled in most other states, while North Carolina, Nevada, Georgia, Arkansas, and Nebraska have experienced growth rates of more than 300% since 1990 (Fortuny et al 2009). More than half of children of immigrants have parents from Mexico (41%) and other Latin American countries (17%).…”

“…However, among children of immigrants, nearly one-third (31%) live in mixed status families, where children are citizens, but at least one parent is not (Fortuny et al 2009). Children of immigrants are largely concentrated in six states that have been traditional destination states for immigrants-California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey.…”

Child Care Experiences Among Dual Language Learners in the United States

“…In much of the research to date, it is often unclear whether differences observed in DLLs' child care use are due to family decisions related to home language or due to other factors related to child care usage, such as recent immigration, poverty, low parental education, and limited English proficiency (Capps, Fix, Ost, Reardon-Anderson, & Passel, 2005;Fortuny, Capps, Simms, & Chaudry, 2009). In the United States, many families with home languages other than English are likely to live in poverty and be born outside the United States (Zong & Batalova, 2015).…”