Demographics and Trends

This report describes the work the Urban Institute performed to generate the Model of Income in the Near Term, Version 6 (MINT6). MINT is a tool developed for the Social Security Administration (SSA) to analyze the distributional consequences of Social Security reform proposals. MINT is a micro-level data file of individuals born between 1926 and 2075. It starts with a rich set of income and demographic characteristics from the 2001 and 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data linked to SSA data on earnings and benefits. MINT then projects these characteristics until death or the year 2099.

Immigration is transforming the U.S. labor force with important consequences for Social Security's adequacy and finances. Using longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation matched to administrative data on lifetime earnings and benefit receipt, we measure the extent to which nonnatives' lifetime earning patterns, payroll taxes paid, benefits received, and total incomes differ from those for the U.S.-born population. We consider other outcomes important to retirement security, like health status, marital status, and financial wealth. We also compare various immigrant groups with one another. Our findings stress heterogeneity in labor force and Social Security experiences among immigrants.

Growth in the number of children in immigrant families during the 2000s offset the decline in children with native-born parents. Between 2000 and 2009, the minority share of U.S. children under age 18 increased from 38 to 44 percent, driven by growth in the number of Hispanic and non-Hispanic Asian children and a decline in non-Hispanic white children. While the increase in minority children included children with foreign-and native-born parents, children of immigrants accounted for most of the growth. This brief highlights important trends in the changing demographics of the U.S. child population nationally and across states.

The majority (84 percent) of the 17 million children of immigrants in the United States live in the 100 largest metropolitan areas. Children of immigrants drove the growth in the child population under age 18 nationally and in the largest metros: if it was not for them, the child population in the top 100 metros overall and in many metros would have declined in the last decade. Driven by immigration and population momentum, the child minority share across the top 100 metros reached 51 percent in 2009 and many of the largest metros became "majority minority" metros.

Over the last two decades, the United States has witnessed its biggest wave of immigration since the late 19th century. Today’s immigrants have settled in many more communities across the country, including some that received few immigrants in the past. The diversity of these destination communities means that recent immigrants’ experiences and effects vary widely.

Join us as a distinguished panel discusses the implications of immigration’s mix and magnitude. How are metropolitan communities affected by and adapting to the influx of immigrants -- and the children of immigrants? What new challenges and opportunities confront local, state, and federal policy?

Growth in immigration flows in the past three decades has almost tripled the size of the foreign-born population in the United States: from 14 million in 1980 to 38 million in 2007. Immigrants are still heavily concentrated in the six traditional immigrant destination states (California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey), but immigrant numbers grew rapidly in many western, midwestern, and southeastern states. Not surprisingly, many metropolitan areas outside the traditional destination states saw high immigration growth. This brief examines immigration and poverty trends between 1980 and 2007 across the 100 metropolitan areas with the largest immigrant populations.

This data brief is the fourth in a series that profiles children of immigrants using up-to-date census data and other sources. The first brief highlighted the fast growth of the immigrant population and important demographic trends. The second described the family circumstances of children of immigrants, and the third highlighted the circumstances of young children age 0 to 8. The current brief focuses on immigrant families' incomes, economic well-being, food insecurity, and use of public benefits.

This special forum will scan the demographics of the children of the undocumented, explore the developmental and educational challenges they face, discuss social and cultural barriers to integration, and debate how public policy and agencies can foster a healthy atmosphere for children living and learning here.