Can Immigration Explain Race and Ethnic Variation?

Intergenerational coresidence is generally viewed as an adaptive living arrangement for both parents and their adult children facing economic constraints. Yet despite the importance of socioeconomic characteristics in predicting living arrangements, racial and ethnic differences persist. In this paper, we demonstrate that much of the race and ethnic variation in living arrangements is attributable to recent immigration and the relative economic position of immigrant parents. Using data from the Current Population Surveys, results suggest that recent immigrant parents, particularly Asian and Central and South American immigrant parents, are more likely to live in households in which their adult children provide most of the household income. The likelihood of living in this "dependent " role decreases with duration of residence in the United States. Differences in the ethnic composition and incomes of recent older immigrants relative to longer resident immigrants who age in the United States and to the U.S. born explains little of the greater reliance on coresidence by recent immigrant parents. The likelihood of living in a household in which the parent themselves provides the majority of the househol