Immigrant Families More Likely to Be Burdened by High Housing Costs
Paying more for housing — while bringing home smaller paychecks — puts immigrant families at a distinct disadvantage. Find out more from the KIDS COUNT Data Center.
Children in immigrant families are either foreign born or live with at least one foreign-born parent. This group of 18 million kids represents nearly 25% of the nation’s child population.
At the state level, immigration has played a significant role in shaping the local child population. From 1990 to 2017, 38 states plus the District of Columbia reported that their share of children in immigrant families at least doubled. In 20 states, it at least tripled. And in 12 states — led by North Carolina, Tennessee, Nebraska and Arkansas — the share of children in immigrant families at least quadrupled.
Refugees make up a small fraction of the 1.4 million immigrants who come to the United States each year. In 2016, approximately 85,000 individuals with refugee status were admitted into the country to escape persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political viewpoint.
Although high-skilled immigrants fill an important need in many industries, they also fill gaps in low-skilled, low-wage jobs, which can leave kids in immigrant families economically vulnerable. More than 50% of kids living in immigrant families are low-income and approximately 25% are poor.
Paying more for housing — while bringing home smaller paychecks — puts immigrant families at a distinct disadvantage. Find out more from the KIDS COUNT Data Center.
One in four kids in America — 18 million children total — hailed from an immigrant family in 2014. While most are U.S. citizens, several factors place them at a disadvantage as they grow into adulthood.
This paper — the result of a roundtable discussion hosted by the Casey Foundation and the Center for Law and Social Policy — explores policy and practice reforms that can help both parents and kids in immigrant families thrive.
In America, 12 million kids — 22% of the child population — speak a language other than English at home. And, that's not a bad thing.
Compared to kids from U.S.-born families, children in immigrant families are more likely to live in households that spend more than 30% of their income on housing (33% compared with 45%).
Although they are more likely to have parents with full-time year-round employment, kids in immigrant families are more likely to live in low-income working families than their U.S.-born counterparts (37% vs. 22%).
In 2013, 17.8 million children lived in immigrant families, a 26% increase from the last decade. Of these children, 89% are U.S. citizens.
Asian Americans United has provided services and a safe place for Philadelphia youth for almost 30 years.
Irene Lee directs the Foundation’s work focused on ensuring individuals and families have access to economic opportunity and started our grant making around refugee and immigrant families. She sits down for Five Questions with Casey.
This report—the seventh in a series focused on juvenile detention reform—boldly goes where few reports have gone before: straight to the intersection of immigration and the American juvenile justice system. Readers will learn how to help ensure the safe and fair treatment of noncitizen youth in detention by adopting policies and procedures that are consistent with the goals of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI). Launched in 1992, Annie E. Casey Foundation’s JDAI is a multi-year, multi-site effort to reduce reliance on secure detention while creating a more efficient and equitable juvenile justice system.
