One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: The Increase in Immigrant Child Poverty from 1970 to 2000

Prior research on child poverty has focused heavily on the roles of family structure and, to a lesser extent, parental work patterns to explain trends over time and differences across groups. However, immigrant child poverty has increased significantly over the past three decades even though labor force participation is high among immigrants and immigrant families are likely to be headed by a married couple. We document the levels and determinants of child poverty trends among children of immigrants and children of natives from 1970 through 2000. We find that much of the increase in immigrant child poverty can be linked to changing conditions in the U.S. economy that make it more difficult to lift a family out of poverty than thirty years ago as indicated by declining returns to parental education and employment and increasing poverty levels among larger families. One interpretation of this finding is that the on-going macro-economic shifts from a manufacturing- to an information-based economy may have put in place significant new barriers to immigrant incorporation in the U.S.