Children of immigrants: National and State characteristics (Brief No. 9

In 2007, about 16.4 million children, or more than one in five children in the United States, had at least one immigrant parent.1 The number of children of immigrants doubled from 8 mil-lion in 1990, and their share of all children age 0 to 17 increased from 13 to 23 percent during this period. This large demographic group deserves particular attention because its growth has important implications for federal, state, and local education, health, housing, and family policies. Children of immigrants are also likely to represent a large share of the nation’s future labor force. In addition, children of immigrants deserve special attention because they face many universal risk factors to children’s well-being, such as lower parental education and family incomes, but they are also adversely affected by factors unique to immigration, such as lack of parental citizenship and English proficiency (Capps et al. 2004; Hernandez 2004). Yet, no single portrait of children of immi-grants holds for every state. Diverse groups of immigrants have dispersed in large numbers to states with historically few immigrants. States also have differing policies for integrating newcomers. While children of immigrants make up 23 per-cent of all children nationwide, their shares vary significantly by state; children of immigrants make up close to 50 percent of children in California but only 8 percent of children in Arkansas. Similarly, the rate at which their shares grew between 1990 and 2007 varies across states; it more than doubled in Nevada (from 15 to 34 per-cent) but increased by only a third in Rhode Island (from 18 to 24 percent). Nevertheless, there are also similarities across states; for exam-ple, young children are more likely than older children to have immigrant parents. Up-to-date state information on the charac-teristics and population size of children of immi-grants is essential for planning and implementing educational, health, housing, labor, and other social programs that affect children, their families, and other residents. This brief, a companion to the Urban Institute’s new interactive Children of Immigrants Data Tool, provides a glimpse of the national and state characteristics of children o