Welfare and the Children of Immigrants: Transmission of Dependence or Investment in the Future?

Kelly Balistreri, Bowling Green State University

This study examines the intergenerational effects of welfare receipt among immigrant families, by focusing on the relationship between the receipt of welfare within immigrant families and three key outcomes among the young adult native-born children of immigrants—educational attainment, adult welfare use, and adult labor force participation. Using data from multiple years of the Current Population Survey (CPS), I apply a grouping estimation procedure to generate intergenerational correlations in welfare receipt between an immigrant parent cohort and the young adult (ages 19 to 23) second generation in the United States. To more fully evaluate the relationship between welfare receipt and adult children’s outcomes, multivariate techniques and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997-2002) are used to examine the relationship between prior adolescent welfare exposure and the subsequent outcomes of the young adult children of immigrants.