We use place of birth information from the Social Security Administration linked to earnings data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program and detailed race and ethnicity data from the 2010 Census to study how long-term earnings differentials vary by place of birth for different self-identified race and ethnicity categories. We focus on foreign-born persons from countries that are heavily Hispanic and from countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We find substantial heterogeneity of long-term earnings differentials within country of birth, some of which will be difficult to detect when the reporting format changes from the current two-question version to the new single-question version because they depend on self-identifications that place the individual in two distinct categories within the single-question format, specifically, Hispanic and White or Black, and MENA and White or Black. We also study the USA-born children of these same immigrants. Long-term earnings differences for the 2nd generation also vary as a function of self-identified ethnicity and race in ways that changing to the single-question format could affect.
-
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
-
More than a Million New American Indians in 2000: Who are They?
March 2013
Working Paper Number:
CES-13-02
Over a million people reported their race as American Indian in the 2000 U.S. Census but did not report that race in the 1990 Census. We investigate three questions related to this extraordinary population change: (1) Which subgroups of American Indians had the greatest numerical growth? (2) Which subgroups had the greatest proportional increase? And (3) is it plausible that all 'new' American Indians reported multiple races in 2000? We use full-count and high-density decennial U.S. census data; adjust for birth, death, and immigration; decompose on age, gender, Latino origin, education, and birth state; and compare the observed American Indian subgroup sizes in 2000 to the sizes expected based on 1990 counts. The largest numerical increases were among non-Latino youth (ages 10-19), non-Latino adult women, and adults with no college degree. Latinos, highly-educated adults, and women have the largest proportionate gains, perhaps indicating that 'American Indian' has special appeal in these groups. We also find evidence that a substantial number of new American Indians reported only American Indian race in 2000, rather than a multiple-race response. This research is relevant to social theorists, race scholars, community members, program evaluators, and the Census Bureau.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
America's Churning Races: Race and Ethnic Response Changes between Census 2000 and the 2010 Census
August 2014
Working Paper Number:
carra-2014-09
Race and ethnicity responses can change over time and across contexts - a component of population change not usually taken into account. To what extent do race and/or Hispanic origin responses change? Is change more common to/from some race/ethnic groups than others? Does the propensity to change responses vary by characteristics of the individual? To what extent do these changes affect researchers? We use internal Census Bureau data from the 2000 and 2010 censuses in which individuals' responses have been linked across years. Approximately 9.8 million people (about 6 percent) in our large, non-representative linked data have a different race and/or Hispanic origin response in 2010 than they did in 2000. Several groups experienced considerable fluidity in racial identification: American Indians and Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, and multiple-race response groups, as well as Hispanics when reporting a race. In contrast, race and ethnic responses for single-race non-Hispanic whites, blacks, and Asians were relatively consistent over the decade, as were ethnicity responses by Hispanics. People who change their race and/or Hispanic origin response(s) are doing so in a wide variety of ways, as anticipated by previous research. For example, people's responses change from multiple races to a single race, from a single race to multiple races, from one single race to another, and some people add or drop a Hispanic response. The inflow of people to each race/Hispanic group is in many cases similar in size to the outflow from the same group, such that cross-sectional data would show a small net change. We find response changes across ages, sexes, regions, and response modes, with variation across groups. Researchers should consider the implications of changing race and Hispanic origin responses when conducting analyses and interpreting results.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
Comparing Measures of Earnings Instability Based on Survey and Adminstrative Reports
August 2010
Working Paper Number:
CES-10-15
In Celik, Juhn, McCue, and Thompson (2009), we found that estimated levels of earnings instability based on data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) were reasonably close to each other and to others' estimates from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), but estimates from unemployment insurance (UI) earnings were much larger. Given that the UI data are from administrative records which are often posited to be more accurate than survey reports, this raises concerns that measures based on survey data understate true earnings instability. To address this, we use links between survey samples from the SIPP and UI earnings records in the LEHD database to identify sources of differences in work history and earnings information. Substantial work has been done comparing earnings levels from administrative records to those collected in the SIPP and CPS, but our understanding of earnings instability would benefit from further examination of differences across sources in the properties of changes in earnings. We first compare characteristics of the overall and matched samples to address issues of selection in the matching process. We then compare earnings levels and jobs in the SIPP and LEHD data to identify differences between them. Finally we begin to examine how such differences affect estimates of earnings instability. Our preliminary findings suggest that differences in earnings changes for those in the lower tail of the earnings distribution account for much of the difference in instability estimates.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
Covering Undocumented Immigrants: The Effects of a Large-Scale Prenatal Care Intervention
August 2022
Working Paper Number:
CES-22-28
Undocumented immigrants are ineligible for public insurance coverage for prenatal care in most states, despite their children representing a large fraction of births and having U.S. citizenship. In this paper, we examine a policy that expanded Medicaid pregnancy coverage to undocumented immigrants. Using a novel dataset that links California birth records to Census surveys, we identify siblings born to immigrant mothers before and after the policy. Implementing a mothers' fixed effects design, we find that the policy increased coverage for and use of prenatal care among pregnant immigrant women, and increased average gestation length and birth weight among their children.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
U.S. Long-Term Earnings Outcomes by Sex, Race, Ethnicity, and Place of Birth
May 2021
Working Paper Number:
CES-21-07R
This paper is part of the Global Income Dynamics Project cross-country comparison of earnings inequality, volatility, and mobility. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) infrastructure files we produce a uniform set of earnings statistics for the U.S. From 1998 to 2019, we find U.S. earnings inequality has increased and volatility has decreased. The combination of increased inequality and reduced volatility suggest earnings growth differs substantially across different demographic groups. We explore this further by estimating 12-year average earnings for a single cohort of age 25-54 eligible workers. Differences in labor supply (hours paid and quarters worked) are found to explain almost 90% of the variation in worker earnings, although even after controlling for labor supply substantial earnings differences across demographic groups remain unexplained. Using a quantile regression approach, we estimate counterfactual earnings distributions for each demographic group. We find that at the bottom of the earnings distribution differences in characteristics such as hours paid, geographic division, industry, and education explain almost all the earnings gap, however above the median the contribution of the differences in the returns to characteristics becomes the dominant component.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
Re-examining Regional Income Convergence: A Distributional Approach
February 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-05
We re-examine recent trends in regional income convergence, considering the full distribution of income rather than focusing on the mean. Measuring similarity by comparing each percentile of state
distributions to the corresponding percentile of the national distribution, we find that state incomes have become less similar (i.e. they have diverged) within the top 20 percent of the income distribution since 1969. The top percentile alone accounts for more than half of aggregate divergence across states over this period by our measure, and the top five percentiles combine to account for 93 percent. Divergence in top incomes across states appears to be driven largely by changes in top incomes among White people, while top incomes among Black people have experienced relatively little divergence.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
The Distributional Effects of Minimum Wages: Evidence from Linked Survey and Administrative Data
March 2018
Working Paper Number:
carra-2018-02
States and localities are increasingly experimenting with higher minimum wages in response to rising income inequality and stagnant economic mobility, but commonly used public datasets offer limited opportunities to evaluate the extent to which such changes affect earnings growth. We use administrative earnings data from the Social Security Administration linked to the Current Population Survey to overcome important limitations of public data and estimate effects of the minimum wage on growth incidence curves and income mobility profiles, providing insight into how cross-sectional effects of the minimum wage on earnings persist over time. Under both approaches, we find that raising the minimum wage increases earnings growth at the bottom of the distribution, and those effects persist and indeed grow in magnitude over several years. This finding is robust to a variety of specifications, including alternatives commonly used in the literature on employment effects of the minimum wage. Instrumental variables and subsample analyses indicate that geographic mobility likely contributes to the effects we identify. Extrapolating from our estimates suggests that a minimum wage increase comparable in magnitude to the increase experienced in Seattle between 2013 and 2016 would have blunted some, but not nearly all, of the worst income losses suffered at the bottom of the income distribution during the Great Recession.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
The Relationship of Personal and Neighborhood Characteristics to Immigrant Fertility
August 2002
Working Paper Number:
CES-02-20
We find that fertility varies by immigrant generation, with significant declines between the first and subsequent generations for groups with large immigrant population. However, we find that personal characteristics--such as educational attainment, marital status, and income levels--are much more important than immigrant generation in understanding fertility outcomes. In fact, generations are not independently important once these personal characteristics are controlled for. We maintain that declining fertility levels among the descendants of Mexican and Central American immigrants are primarily the result of higher educational attainment levels, lower rates of marriage, and lower poverty. For example, a four-year increase in educational attainment decreases children ever born (CEB) by half a child. We conclude that immigrant generation serves as a proxy for changes in other personal characteristics that decrease fertility. Neighborhood characteristics have some bearing on fertility, but the correlations are relatively weak. Among Mexican and Central American immigrants and their descendants, the most consistent predictor of children ever born (CEB) at the neighborhood level is the percentage of Hispanic adults. However, no neighborhood characteristics bear any statistical relationship to current fertility, the measure that emphasizes recent births. This pattern of evidence suggests that the observed relationships between neighborhood characteristics and fertility are based on selection into the neighborhood rather than on neighborhood influences as such.
View Full
Paper PDF
-
Choices of Metropolitan Destinations by the 1995-2000 New Immigrants Born in Mexico and India: Characterization and Multivariate Explanation
September 2008
Working Paper Number:
CES-08-27
Using the confidential long-form records of the 2000 population census, we study the choices of metropolitan destinations made by the Mexican-born and Indian-born immigrants who arrived in the United States in 1995-2000. Based on the application of a multinomial logit model to the data of each of these two ethnic groups, our main findings are as follows. The destination choice behaviors of both ethnic groups were in general consistent with the major theories of migration. Both groups were subject to (1) the attraction of co-ethnic communities and (2) the positive effects of wage level and total employment growth. With respect to the job increases in different wage deciles, both ethnic groups share the pattern that the less educated were subject to the pull of increase in low-wage jobs, whereas the better educated were subject to the pull of increase in high-wage jobs. With respect to the possibility of competitions against other foreignborn ethnics, both ethnic groups were found to be more prone to selecting destinations where their co-ethnics represented a relatively high proportion of the foreign-born population. The main differences in destination choice behaviors between the two ethnic groups resulted partly from the fact that the relative explanatory powers of our chosen explanatory factors differed substantially between the two ethnic groups. The Mexican-born were more subject to the attractions of (1) larger co-ethnic communities, (2) greater overall employment growth, (3) more job increases in low wage deciles, and (4) greater share of the foreign-born population by coethnics. In contrast, the Indian-born were more attracted by (1) higher wage level, and (2) more job increases in high wage deciles.
View Full
Paper PDF