Employment and Benefits for Working-Age Hispanic Males

In the last chapter we showed that children’s economic, social, and health-care vulnerabilities result directly from their parent’s lack of an adequate income and job benefits, including access to employment-based group health plans. In the next two chapters we will look closely at the occupational situations of those parents as well as of childless Hispanic males and females. In this chapter we examine the issue of access to work-related benefits among Hispanic males, with a special focus on Mexican-origin males. As we have shown in previous chapters, the Mexican-origin population is not only the largest segment of the Hispanic population but also the most disadvantaged in terms of employment benefits. Even among those who are employed full-time full-year, Mexican-origin workers earn less than non-Hispanic whites and have low rates of retirement and health-care coverage. In order to identify the sources of these disadvantages we examine the types of jobs in which Mexican-origin men are employed.