Understanding County-Level Relationships between Foreign-Born Populations, Immigration Arrests, and Child Outcomes in the United States, 2015-2016

Background/Purpose:

Evidence suggests that foreign-born populations have better child outcomes in general compared with US-born populations while controlling for socioeconomic conditions. This is often explained by protective factors of foreign-born populations (e.g., familism, religiosity, and social support), suggesting better child outcomes in communities with more foreign-born residents. Conversely, the Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities may deteriorate such protective factors, which in turn may lessen positive child outcomes. We examined how the proportion of foreign-born residents and the ICE arrest rate were associated with a range of child outcomes (i.e., child maltreatment [CM], child disability, and low birth weight [LBW]) at the county level in the US, overall and within racial/ethnic groups.

Methods:

We used US national county-level data linking multiple databases from 2015-2016. The county-level ICE arrest rates were obtained from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The county-level child outcomes included CM report rates from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, child disability rates from the Census data, and LBW rates from the national natality data. We used a linear mixed model with a year-dummy to handle the multiple observations per county and the nesting of counties within states.

Results:

While controlling for a variety of county demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, counties with higher proportions of foreign-born residents showed significantly lower rates of negative child outcomes. Per every one percentage point (pp) increase in the proportion of foreign-born residents, the CM rate decreased by 0.07 pp [95% CI=0.04-0.09] for all, 0.06 pp [0.04-0.08] for White, 0.06 pp [0.01-0.12] for Black, 0.05 pp [0.02-0.08] for Latino children; the child disability rate decreased by 0.05 pp [0.03-0.07] for all, 0.03 pp [0.01-0.05] for White, 0.12 pp [0.08-0.16] for Black, and 0.05 pp [0.01-0.08] for Latino children; and the LBW rate decreased by 0.02 pp [0.01-0.03] for all, 0.07 pp [0.04-0.10] for Black, and 0.03 pp [0.01-0.05] for Latino children, but not significantly decreased for White children. Conversely, the ICE arrest rate showed no significant association with any of negative child outcomes for overall and within racial/ethnic groups while controlling for other variables.

Conclusions/Implications:

This is the first study using national county-level data to examine the relationships between the proportion of foreign-born residents, the ICE arrest rate, and an important set of child outcomes for both overall and within racial/ethnic groups. We found that counties with proportionally more foreign-born residents had significantly lower rates of CM report, child disability, and LBW in the US in 2015-2016. Interestingly, these relationships were observed among not only Latino children, but also White and Black children. While these observational findings have limited causal implications, they suggest the importance of further research to understand whether an increased foreign-born population within a community creates safer and healthier contexts for all residents. Regarding the ICE activities, we found no evidence supporting that the ICE arrest rate was related to increased rates of negative child outcomes among Latino children, as well as White and Black children.