U.S. Immigration and Changing Kin Support in Mexican Families, 2001-2018

• In Event: 30664 - Social Ties and Networks Across the Life Course

Abstract

Since 2005, Mexico-US migration has fundamentally changed, marked by lower emigration and higher return tied to both the Great Recession and heightened enforcement. These shifts, together with fertility declines for the last half-Century, have likely had profound implications for Mexico-based older adults’ support networks. In this paper, we use data from the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) to describe the changing location distribution of Mexican older adults’ children. Taking advantage of longitudinal follow-ups and refresher samples in the MHAS, we examine cross-sections of the 50+ population in 2001, 2012, and 2018 and longitudinal change for three key cohorts over this period. Our results show that, from 2001 to 2018, a declining cross-section of the older adult population had children in the U.S., with declines more marked for sons and more pronounced among those with lower education. Analyses by cohort indicate that demographic changes contribute to this decline, including 1) younger cohorts having fewer children in the first place, and 2) younger cohorts having a smaller share of their children move across the border. Further analyzing longitudinal trends for three different age-cohort combinations –whose children were likely differentially exposed to changing migration dynamics – we find that the share of children in the U.S. remained stable between 2001 to 2018 within each cohort. Altogether, these findings suggest that forgone emigration by children in younger ages are a somewhat more important component of the cross-sectional decline in U.S. child networks than the rise in return migration. We discuss implications for old-age support (e.g., via remittance receipt) for the rapidly growing Mexican older-age population.

Authors

• Leafia Zi Ye, University of Toronto

• Jenna Nobles, University of Wisconsin, Madison

• Fernando Riosmena, University of Texas-San Antonio