Changes and Continuities Over Time in Socioeconomic and Health Insurance Status of Undocumented and Documented Immigrants

Heeju Sohn , University of California, Los Angeles
Anne Pebley, University of California, Los Angeles

We use newly developed methods to describe the foreign-born population in the US using three—2004, 2008, and 2014—panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Multivariate analyses show that undocumented immigrants’ relative disadvantage in income and employment, compared to documented immigrants, was significantly starker during the Great Recession. Our results also show that that the well-being of the undocumented population improved in 2014. Compared to 2004, greater proportion of undocumented immigrants have some post-secondary education and work in higher skill jobs. Rates of private insurance coverage and homeownership are also higher in 2014, and these differences reduced the wide socioeconomic inequality between documented and undocumented immigrants seen in earlier years.

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 Presented in Session 224. Unauthorized and Irregular Migration