Neighborhoods, Legal Status, and Family Formation Transitions among Mexican-origin Adults

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Abstract

This paper investigates how various individual-level and contextual-level characteristics conjointly influence Mexican-origin adults’ transitions to family formation. The study uses the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, with emphasis on two major axes of stratification: legal status and post-migration neighborhood contexts. The paper first estimates the typology of Mexican neighborhoods using the latent profile model approach, and then investigates the role of different neighborhoods for family formation transitions (i.e., transitions to marriage, cohabitation, and singlehood) using a multilevel model. The results show that the most salient characteristic determining the types of neighborhood marriage markets is the Hispanic sex ratio and that residing in a Mexican immigrant marriage market was associated with higher odds of making all three types of family transitions. The results also show that legal status is a critical factor in understanding family formation transitions among Mexican-origin adults. Specifically, documented Mexican immigrants were significantly more likely to transition to marriage, whereas undocumented Mexican immigrants were significantly more likely to transition to cohabitation. The findings illustrate the importance of considering the roles of legal status and post-migration neighborhood contexts for understanding family formation transitions among Mexican-origin adults.

Author

• Aggie Jooyoung Noah, Arizona State University