Abstract
Immigration policy is at the forefront of US policy discussions, and the use of welfare benefits by immigrants has been hotly debated. In 1996, Congress enacted welfare reform legislation, which imposed strict restrictions on welfare eligibility for noncitizens. However, a number of states restored access to welfare benefits to immigrants that had been cut out in the federal welfare reform law. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we examine whether immigrant women adjusted their childbearing in response to changes in the generosity of welfare benefits at the state-level. We find that noncitizen women reduced their fertility in response to cutbacks imposed by the legislation. Our findings, which prove robust to a number of identification and robustness checks, underscore how immigrants respond to state-level policies and provide insight into the potential impacts of comprehensive immigration reform, particularly the components related to the path to citizenship and access to public benefits.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Similar to Borjas (2003), we do not use the years 1996 and 1997 in our analysis. This allows us to isolate the pre- and post-PRWORA time periods. The June CPS fertility survey was not conducted in 1999.
Immigrant participation in welfare programs kept on growing since then (Borjas 2003). Hence, one might ask: Why did some states decide to maintain immigrants’ access to programs such as TANF, food stamps, and Medicaid, while other states did not? Early work on this question indicated that the size of the state’s noncitizen population was unrelated to program generosity toward immigrants in the first years following PRWORA (Zimmermann and Tumlin 1999). However, states with strong immigrant advocacy groups and a liberal voting public were more consistent predictors of state generosity toward immigrants (Graefe et al. 2008). We also examined this question in our endogeneity tests and did not find a relationship between the share of immigrants and the generosity of states (see Table 7).
See Bachu and O’Connell 2001 for more details about the June CPS and the fertility of American women.
There are several ways that immigrants can be categorized: naturalized citizens (foreign-born individuals who became citizens), legal permanent residents (noncitizens who have been granted permission to reside permanently in the USA and to apply for naturalization after meeting certain requirements), and refugees and asylees (individuals admitted to the USA who are unable or unwilling to return to their home countries due to legitimate fear of persecution). In addition, the foreign-born population includes legal temporary residents (e.g., students or those with temporary work visas) and undocumented immigrants (individuals who stay in the USA illegally; i.e., beyond their visa limits or those who enter the country illegally and stay).
Because immigrants who have been in the country for 5 years or longer could apply for benefits, splitting the sample according to the migration spell of migrants would make sense given that the cutbacks exclusively impacted newly arrived immigrants. Note, however, that our last year of data is 2000 and PRWORA was enacted in 1996. Therefore, all naturalized immigrants (all with, at least, 5 years of permanent residency in the USA) in our sample had arrived pre-PRWORA. Similarly, all immigrants who arrived post-PRWORA in our sample are noncitizens.
In our specification, the variable post includes all foreign-born noncitizens and does not split them by pre- and post-1996 arrival date. An alternative model would separate the post-1996 arrivals to address the impact of the policy change on those directly targeted. However, our sample limitations preclude this possibility.
It is interesting to note how the policy impact loses significance as we include information on migrants’ arrival cohort. Yet, the policy impact reemerges as soon as we account for basic state and year fixed-effects.
Although the standard errors are larger for the naturalized immigrant sample indicating less precision for this subgroup of immigrants, the point estimates are small and indicate that there was no significant effect for this sample.
Note that the standard errors for this group are quite a bit larger, but the point estimates also fall by around half, making this group less responsive than the foreign-born noncitizen group. Nonetheless, any response to the policy by this group would be evidence of a chilling effect.
Because we have 2 years of data prior to PRWORA, we are able to include one lead-year in our model. Our reference period then becomes 1994.
We deem the specification in Table 8 as the most appropriate, as it accounts for the state’s population size. Nevertheless, we continue to obtain the same results when we use, instead, other measures of immigrant placement, including the absolute number of immigrants in the state or the share of immigrants in the state relative to the total in the country. These results are available from the authors.
This information was gathered from Bitler and Hoynes (2011).
For immigration population in states see: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/14/15-states-with-the-highest-share-of-immigrants-in-their-population/. Last accessed 6/16/2015.
References
Bachu A, O’Connell M (2001) Fertility of American women, June 2000. US Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, Bureau of the Census
Bitler MP, Hoynes HW (2011) Immigrants, welfare reform and the U.S. Safety Net. NBER Working Paper 17667
Blank R (2002) Evaluating welfare reform in the U.S. NBER Working paper 8982
Borjas G (1999) Immigration and welfare magnets. J Labor Econ 17(4):607–637
Borjas G (2001) Welfare reform and immigration. In: Blank R, Haskings R (eds) The new world of welfare: an agenda for reauthorization and beyond. Brookings Press, Washington, pp 369–385
Borjas G (2003) Welfare reform, labor supply and health insurance in the immigrant population. J Health Econ 22:933–958
Camarota SA (2005) Birth rates among immigrants in America comparing fertility in the US and home countries. Center for Immigration Studies, Washington
Capps R, Leighton K, Fix M, Furgiuele C, Passel J, Ramchand R, McNiven S, Perez-Lopez D, Fielder E, Greenwell M, Hays T (2002) How Are immigrants faring after welfare reform? Preliminary evidence from Los Angeles and New York City: report to the office of the assistant secretary for planning and evaluation, Department of Health and Human Services. Urban Institute, Washington
d’Addio AC, d’Ercole MM (2005) Trends and determinants of fertility rates in OECD countries: the role of policies OECD social, employment and migration working papers no. 27. Available online at: http://www.oecd.org/els/familiesandchildren/35304751.pdf
Dye JL (2008) Fertility of American women: June 2008, Current population reports, P20-563. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington
Falasco D, Heer DM (1984) Economic and fertility differences between legal and undocumented migrant Mexican families: possible effects of immigration policy changes. Soc Sci Q 65(2):495–504
Fix ME, Capps R (2002) The dispersal of immigrants in the 1980s. Urban Institute, Washington, http://www.urban.org/urlprint.cfm?ID=7994 . Accessed 10 Oct 2014
Fix M, Passel JS (1999) Trends in noncitizens’ and citizens’ use of public
Fix M, Zimmermann W (1998) The legacies of welfare reform’s immigrant restrictions. Interpreter Releases
Graefe DR, DeJong GF, Hall M, Sturgeon S, Van Eerden J (2008) Immigrants’ TANF eligibility, 1996–2003: What explains the new across-state inequalities? Int Migr Rev 42(1):89–133
Griswold D (2012) Immigration and the welfare state. Cato J 32(1):159–174
Haskins R (2006) Work over welfare: the inside story of the 1996 welfare reform law. Brookings Institution Press, Washington
Kalil A, Ziol-Guest K (2009) Welfare reform and health among the children of immigrants. In: Ziliak JP (ed) Welfare reform and its long-term consequences for America’s poor. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 308–336
Kaushal N, Kaestner R (2005) Welfare reform and health insurance of immigrants. Health Serv Res 40(3):697–722
Lurie IZ (2008) Welfare reform and the decline in the health-insurance coverage of children of non-permanent residents. J Health Econ 27(3):786–793
Mazzolari F (2004) Effects of welfare reform on immigrants’ welfare participation: How ‘Chilling’ are they? Unpublished manuscript. Available online at: http://www.economics.uci.edu/fmazzola/Research/Mazzolarichilling.pdf
Moffitt R (1992) Incentive effects of the U.S. Welfare system: a review. J Econ Lit 30(1):1–61
Moffitt R (1998) The effects of welfare on marriage and fertility. In: Moffitt RA (ed) Welfare, the family, and reproductive behavior: research perspectives. National Academy Press, Washington, pp 50–97
Nam Y (2011) Welfare reform and immigrants: noncitizen eligibility restrictions, vulnerable immigrants, and the social service providers. J Immigr Refug Stud 9(1):5–19
Plotnick R, Winters R (1985) A politico-economic theory of income redistribution. Am Polit Sci Rev 79(2):458–473
Rodríguez MA, Young M-E, Wallace SP (2015) Creating conditions to support healthy people: state policies that affect the health of undocumented immigrants and their families. University of California Global Health Institute, Los Angeles, Available at: https://blumcenter.ucla.edu/files/view/pdf-files/ugchi_immigrant_health_for_web.pdf . Accessed 26 Oct 2015
Sevak P, Schmidt L (2008) Immigrant-native fertility and mortality differentials in the United States
Social Security Advisory Report (2006) Available at: http://ssab.gov/portals/0/documents/2005-Annual-Report.pdf. Accessed 24 Oct 2015
Watson T (2010) Inside the refrigerator: immigration enforcement and chilling effects in Medicaid participation. WP No. 16278, National Bureau of Economic Research
Zimmermann W, Tumlin KC (1999) Patchwork policies: state assistance for immigrants under welfare reform. Occasional Paper No. 24. Urban Institute, Washington, Available at: http://webarchive.urban.org/UploadedPDF/occa24_sup.pdf
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Laura Argys and seminar participants at Colgate University, IZA Bonn and Colorado State University for helpful comments on earlier drafts. They also appreciate the feedback received from three anonymous referees.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Responsible editor: Klaus F. Zimmermann
Appendix
Appendix
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Amuedo-Dorantes, C., Averett, S.L. & Bansak, C.A. Welfare reform and immigrant fertility. J Popul Econ 29, 757–779 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-016-0584-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-016-0584-1