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The Growing Importance of Educational Attainment and Retirement Security of Mexican-Origin Adults in the U.S. and in Mexico

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Challenges of Latino Aging in the Americas

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Abstract

Recent demographic changes have led to a significant increase in the presence of Mexican Americans in the U.S., driven by immigration and relatively high fertility rates. It follows that the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of Mexican Americans have become particularly important in driving socioeconomic and demographic outcomes in the Americas. This chapter explores several of the implications of these outcomes, particularly as they relate to aging, educational attainment, and retirement security. Coordination of cross-border educational and pension/retirement policies between the U.S. and Mexico are also considered.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I obtained these estimates using data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2001, 2013); these data exclude the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and other outlying U.S. territories.

  2. 2.

    Such dramatic demographic changes have not been ignored by scholars and policymakers; examples of recent studies analyzing socioeconomic and demographic outcomes of Hispanic population include those published in edited volumes such as Rodríguez et al. (2008); Leal and Trejo (2011); Verdugo (2012); Gastic and Verdugo (2013); and Mora and Dávila (2013).

  3. 3.

    The estimates in Table 1.1 come from two main sources: (1) the 2012 American Community Survey (ACS), made available by Ruggles et al. (2014) in the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), and (2) the 2010 Population and Housing Census of Mexico, made available by the Minnesota Population Center (2013) in the IPUMS-International. The 2012 ACS contains approximately 1 % of the total U.S. population, and the Mexican census data includes 10 % of Mexico’s population. The IPUMS-provided sampling weights were employed in all of the analyses to maintain the national representation of the data.

  4. 4.

    Unless otherwise noted, the statistics cited are based on my estimates using data from the 2012 ACS (see Note 3).

  5. 5.

    The U.S. has Totalization Agreements with two dozen countries for the purpose of avoiding double taxation of income with respect to social security taxes; Mexico is not currently one of them (Internal Revenue Service 2013).

  6. 6.

    For example, the McAllen Economic Development Corporation (MEDC, http://www.mcallenedc.org) is a not-for-profit corporation under contract with the City of McAllen, Texas, that wants “to create jobs by attracting new industry and helping existing companies expand within the city and in Reynosa, Mexico”. It works with Mexican agencies, including the Reynosa Maquila Association, as part of its strategy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Texas—Pan American, Edinburg, TX, USA

    Marie T. Mora

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  1. Marie T. Mora
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Correspondence to Marie T. Mora .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    William A. Vega

  2. University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Galveston, Texas, USA

    Kyriakos S. Markides

  3. The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA

    Jacqueline L. Angel

  4. School of Public Affairs, University of California. Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Fernando M. Torres-Gil

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Mora, M. (2015). The Growing Importance of Educational Attainment and Retirement Security of Mexican-Origin Adults in the U.S. and in Mexico. In: Vega, W., Markides, K., Angel, J., Torres-Gil, F. (eds) Challenges of Latino Aging in the Americas. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12598-5_1

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