Our understanding of how immigration enforcement impacts crime has been informed by data from the police crime statistics. This study complements existing research by using longitudinal multilevel data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) for 2005-2014 to simultaneously assess the impact of the three predominant immigration policies that have been implemented in local communities. The results indicate that the activation of Secure Communities and 287(g) task force agreements significantly increased violent victimization risk among Latinos, whereas they showed no evident impact on victimization risk among non-Latino Whites and Blacks. The activation of 287(g) jail enforcement agreements and anti-detainer policies had no significant impact on violent victimization risk during the period.Contrary to their stated purpose of enhancing public safety, our results show that the Secure Communities program and 287(g) task force agreements did not reduce crime, but instead eroded security in American communities by increasing the likelihood that Latinos experienced violent victimization. These results support the Federal government's ending of 287(g) task force agreements and its more recent move to end the Secure Communities program. Additionally, the results of our study add to the evidence challenging claims that anti-detainer policies pose a threat to violence risk.
-
Examining Racial Identity Responses Among People with Middle Eastern and North African Ancestry in the American Community Survey
March 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-14
People with Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) backgrounds living in the United States are defined and classified as White by current Federal standards for race and ethnicity, yet many MENA people do not identify as White in surveys, such as those conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Instead, they often select 'Some Other Race', if it is provided, and write in MENA responses such as Arab, Iranian, or Middle Eastern. In processing survey data for public release, the Census Bureau classifies these responses as White in accordance with Federal guidance set by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Research that uses these edited public data relies on limited information on MENA people's racial identification. To address this limitation, we obtained unedited race responses in the nationally representative American Community Survey from 2005-2019 to better understand how people of MENA ancestry report their race. We also use these data to compare the demographic, cultural, socioeconomic, and contextual characteristics of MENA individuals who identify as White versus those who do not identify as White. We find that one in four MENA people do not select White alone as their racial identity, despite official guidance that defines 'White' as people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. A variety of individual and contextual factors are associated with this choice, and some of these factors operate differently for U.S.-born and foreign-born MENA people living in the United States.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
When and Why Does Nonresponse Occur? Comparing the Determinants of Initial Unit Nonresponse and Panel Attrition
September 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-44
Though unit nonresponse threatens data quality in both cross-sectional and panel surveys, little is understood about how initial nonresponse and later panel attrition may be theoretically or empirically distinct phenomena. This study advances current knowledge of the determinants of both unit nonresponse and panel attrition within the context of the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) panel survey, which I link with high-quality federal administrative records, paradata, and geographic data. By exploiting the SIPP's interpenetrated sampling design and relying on cross-classified random effects modeling, this study quantifies the relative effects of sample household, interviewer, and place characteristics on baseline nonresponse and later attrition, addressing a critical gap in the literature. Given the reliance on successful record linkages between survey sample households and federal administrative data in the nonresponse research, this study also undertakes an explicitly spatial analysis of the place-based characteristics associated with successful record linkages in the U.S.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
Resident Perceptions of Crime: How Similar are They to Official Crime Rates?
March 2007
Working Paper Number:
CES-07-10
This study compares the relationship between official crime rates and residents' perceptions of crime in census tracts. Employing a unique dataset that links household level data from the American Housing Survey metro samples over a period of 25 years (1976-2000) with official crime rate data for census tracts in selected cities during selected years, this large sample provides considerable ability to generalize the findings. I find that residents' perception of crime is most strongly related to official rates of tract violent crime. Models simultaneously taking into account both violent and property crime consistently found that property crime actually has a negative effect on perceived crime. Among types of violent crime, the robbery rate is consistently related to higher levels of perceived crime in the tract, whereas it appears a structural shift occurred in the mid-1980s in which aggravated assault and murder rates now impact perceptions of crime, even when taking into account the robbery rate.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
Locating Hispanic Americans, 1900-2020
July 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-50
This study examines Hispanic Americans' residential settlement patterns nationwide in the last 120 years. Drawing on newly available neighborhood data for the whole country as early as 1900, it documents the direction and timing of changes in two aspects of their location. First, it charts Hispanics' transition from a predominantly rural population to majority metropolitan by 1930 and also their growing presence in all regions of the U.S. while still maintaining a predominance in the West and Texas. Second, it provides the first evidence of the long-term trajectory of their segregation from whites in the metropolitan areas where they were settling. As shown by studies of more recent decades, Hispanics were never as segregated as African Americans. Nonetheless, similar to African Americans, their segregation from whites increased to high levels through the middle of the century, followed by slow decline. For both groups metropolitan segregation was driven mainly by segregation among central city neighborhoods prior to the 1940s. But new forms of segregation ' a growing city/suburb divide and increasing segregation among suburban places ' have become the largest contributors to segregation today.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
Shift or replenishment? Reassessing the prospect of stable Spanish bilingualism across contexts of ethnic change
June 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-28
Much of the existing literature on Latinos' use of Spanish claims that a general pattern of intergenerational decline in the use of Spanish will produce an overall shift away from Spanish use in the U.S. (Rumbaut, Massey, and Bean 2006; Veltman 1983b, 1990). In contrast, recent works emphasize the importance of the social and linguistic context in reinforcing the use of Spanish as well as (pan)ethnic identities among U.S.-born Latinos (Linton 2004; Linton and Jim'nez 2009; Stevens 1992). This literature suggests conditions under which Spanish-English bilingualism might become stable at the level of metropolitan areas; however, such conditions depend on how immigration shapes the context of language use for native-born Latinos. Given the declining levels of immigration from Latin America, will bilingualism subside in the U.S., or have certain communities created conditions in which bilingualism can be stable? Using geocoded data from restricted access versions of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the American Community Survey (ACS), we model the probability of Spanish-English bilingualism among second- and third-generation Latinos using multilevel models with contextual measures of immigration and language use at both the neighborhood and metropolitan levels. We find evidence that U.S.-born Latinos are heavily influenced by the prevalence of Spanish use among U.S. born Latinos at both the metropolitan and neighborhood levels. Further, the proportion of foreign-born Latinos has little effect on the native born, after controlling for Spanish use among U.S,-born Latinos. These results are a first step in understanding the link between ethnic or panethnic contexts and language practices, and also in producing a better characterization of stable bilingualism that can be tested quantitatively.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
The Case of the Missing Ethnicity: Indians without Tribes in the 21st Century
June 2011
Working Paper Number:
CES-11-17
Among American Indians and Alaska Natives, most aspects of ethnicity are tightly associated with the person's tribal origins. Language, history, foods, land, and traditions differ among the hundreds of tribes indigenous to the United States. Why did almost one million of them fail to respond to the tribal affiliation part of the Census 2000 race question? We investigate four hypotheses about why one-third of multiracial American Indians and one-sixth of single-race American Indians did not report a tribe: (1) survey item non-response which undermines all fillin- the-blank questions, (2) a non-salient tribal identity, (3) a genealogy-based affiliation, and (4) mestizo identity which does not require a tribe. We use multivariate logistic regression models and high-density restricted-use Census 2000 data. We find support for the first two hypotheses and note that the predictors and results differ substantially for single race versus multiple race American Indians.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
Examining Multi-Level Correlates of Suicide by Merging NVDRS and ACS Data
January 2017
Working Paper Number:
CES-17-25
This paper describes a novel database and an associated suicide event prediction model that surmount longstanding barriers in suicide risk factor research. The database comingles person-level records from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) and the American Community Survey (ACS) to establish a case-control study sample that includes all identified suicide cases, while faithfully reflecting general population sociodemographics, in sixteen USA states during the years 2005 2011. It supports a statistical model of individual suicide risk that accommodates person-level factors and the moderation of these factors by their community rates. Named the United States Multi-Level Suicide Data Set (US-MSDS), the database was developed outside the RDC laboratory using publicly available ACS microdata, and reconstructed inside the laboratory using restricted access ACS microdata. Analyses of the latter version yielded findings that largely amplified but also extended those obtained from analyses of the former. This experience shows that the analytic precision achievable using restricted access ACS data can play an important role in conducting social research, although it also indicates that publicly available ACS data have considerable value in conducting preliminary analyses and preparing to use an RDC laboratory. The database development strategy may interest scientists investigating sociodemographic risk factors for other types of low-frequency mortality.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
Disconnected Geography: A Spatial Analysis of Disconnected Youth in the United States
January 2016
Working Paper Number:
CES-16-37
Since the Great Recession, US policy and advocacy groups have sought to better understand its effect on a group of especially vulnerable young adults who are not enrolled in school or training programs and not participating in the labor market, so called 'disconnected youth.' This article distinguishes between disconnected youth and unemployed youth and examines the spatial clustering of these two groups across counties in the US. The focus is to ascertain whether there are differences in underlying contextual factors among groups of counties that are mutually exclusive and spatially disparate (non-adjacent), comprising two types of spatial clusters ' high rates of disconnected youth and high rates of unemployed youth. Using restricted, household-level census data inside the Census Research Data Center (RDC) under special permission by the US Census Bureau, we were able to define these two groups using detailed household questionnaires that are not available to researchers outside the RDC. The geospatial patterns in the two types of clusters suggest that places with high concentrations of disconnected youth are distinctly different in terms of underlying characteristics from places with high concentrations of unemployed youth. These differences include, among other things, arrests for synthetic drug production, enclaves of poor in rural areas, persistent poverty in areas, educational attainment in the populace, children in poverty, persons without health insurance, the
social capital index, and elders who receive disability benefits. This article provides some preliminary evidence regarding the social forces underlying the two types of observed geospatial clusters and discusses how they differ.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
The Use of Administrative Records and the American Community Survey to Study the Characteristics of Undercounted Young Children in the 2010 Census
May 2018
Working Paper Number:
carra-2018-05
Children under age five are historically one of the most difficult segments of the population to enumerate in the U.S. decennial census. The persistent undercount of young children is highest among Hispanics and racial minorities. In this study, we link 2010 Census data to administrative records from government and third party data sources, such as Medicaid enrollment data and tenant rental assistance program records from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to identify differences between children reported and not reported in the 2010 Census. In addition, we link children in administrative records to the American Community Survey to identify various characteristics of households with children under age five who may have been missed in the last census. This research contributes to what is known about the demographic, socioeconomic, and household characteristics of young children undercounted by the census. Our research also informs the potential benefits of using administrative records and surveys to supplement the U.S. Census Bureau child population enumeration efforts in future decennial censuses.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
Mortality in a Multi-State Cohort of Former State Prisoners, 2010-2015
February 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-06
Previous studies report that individuals who have been imprisoned have higher mortality rates than their demographic counterparts in the general population, particularly non-Hispanic white former prisoners. Most of these studies have been based on a single state's prison system, and the extent to which their findings can be generalized has not been established. In this study we explore the role that race/Hispanic origin, other demographic characteristics, and custodial/ criminal history factors have on post-release mortality, including on the timing of deaths. We also assess whether conditional release to community supervision or reimprisonment may explain the higher post-release mortality found among non-Hispanic whites. In the second part of the analysis, we estimate standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) by sex, age group, and race/Hispanic origin using as reference the U.S. general population. The data come from state prison releases from the Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP). The NCRP records were linked to the Census Numident to identify deaths occurring within five years from prison release. We also linked NCRP records to previous decennial censuses and survey responses to obtain self-reported race and Hispanic origin if available. We found that non-Hispanic white former prisoners were more likely to die within five years after prison release and more likely to die in the initial weeks after release compared to racial minorities and Hispanics. Reimprisonment, age at release, and a history of multiple prison terms had a similar influence on the odds of dying across all race/Hispanic origin groups. Other factors, such as the type of release and the duration of the last term in prison, were associated with higher risks of mortality for some groups but not for others.
View Full
Paper PDF