State-Level Immigrant Policies and Ideal Family Size in the United States (WP-23-40)
Julia Behrman and Abigail Weitzman
Demographers have long been interested in how fertility ideals vary in response to perceived existential threats. Although migration scholars document the increasingly threatening nature of U.S. immigration policies for immigrants and ethnic minorities more broadly, little research explores how these policies shape the fertility ideals of those most affected by them. To that end, Behrman and Weitzman exploit spatiotemporal variation in states’ evolving immigrant policy contexts to understand the effects of different policies on the ideal family size of Hispanics—a group who is most likely to be stereotyped as undocumented and most likely to live in a mixed-status household or community. Specifically, the researchers combine time-varying information on state-level immigrant policies with georeferenced cross sectional and panel survey data from the General Social Survey (GSS). Results suggest that Omnibus policies—which bundle multiple restrictive laws together and thus impose sweeping restrictions—are associated with significantly higher ideal family sizes among Hispanics compared to Whites. On the other hand, sanctuary policies, which aim to curb federal immigration enforcement, and E-verify mandates, which aim to curb the employment of undocumented immigrants, are not associated with significant differences. Models estimated with person-fixed effects, which exploit variation in the same individuals’ exposure to different policies over time, echo these patterns. The researchers’ analyses provide new insights into the complex ways in which the evolving U.S. immigrant policy landscape has far reaching impacts on reproductive and family life.