CULTURAL FACTORS AFFEMNG WITHIN HOUSEHOLD COVERAGE

AND PROXY REPORTING IN HISPANIC (SALVADORAN) HOUSEHOLDS

Ruth B. McKay

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Room 4985, 2 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E., Washington, DC 20212

Introduction

This paper describes the first use of anthropological research methods by the Bureau of Labor

Statistics (BLS) to investigate cultural factors associated with Hispanic undercoverage and proxy

reporting in a major BLS survey. The research consisted of a small-scale ethnographic field study

of Salvadoran and Non-Hispanic White households in suburban Maryland.

The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a BLS-sponsored longitudinal survey of labor force

participation in 60,000 households in the United States, and is the main source of information on

employment, unemployment, and underemployment in this country. While the response rate for

the survey is about 95%, a source of agency concern is the underreporting for Hispanic

households.

A recent Census Bureau figure for total Hispanic undercoverage in the CPS is over 10%, and

most of this is believed to be within-household undercoverage. Male undercoverage is somewhat

higher than female, with Hispanic male undercoverage about 12% and female undercoverage

about 9 % (Bureau of the Census, 1992). These undercoverage rates for CPS are in addition to

the Hispanic undercount of five percent in the 1980 Census.

A research plan to improve minority coverage, developed for a joint BLS-Census CPS Task Force

in 1989- identified two primary reasons for within household undercoverage:

· Deliberate underreporting because of economic reasons;

· Lack of fit between survey definitions of household and residency and people's actual living

situations.

Among the recommendations for research activities to improve minority coverage contained in

this 1989 Plan are:

· Ethnographic field studies using participant observation techniques;

· Cognitive anthropological interviews to elicit concepts connected with household

membership and residence.
Ethnographic Field Study

The ethnographic field study described in this paper was designed to address the possible lack of

fit between survey definitions of household and residency and the actual living situations of

Hispanics.

The field research was conducted in 1991 in a multi-ethnic Maryland suburb of Washington, DC.

The largest Hispanic group within the Washington area is from El Salvador, and this was the

Hispanic group chosen for study. The design of the study called for ethnographic interviews with

all household members 15 years of age and older in a convenience sample of Salvadoran and nonHispanic White households with similar socioeconomic characteristics. Many adults in both

ethnic groups worked in house-cleaning, office maintenance or construction. Care was taken to

recruit households that represented the main VM found among Salvadorans. These are the single

nuclear family, two nuclear families living together, the female-headed household, and groupings

of several single males.

Salvadoran and Non-Hispanic White respondents were recruited from the congregations of local

Catholic and Protestant churches. Salvadoran respondents were also recruited from a free

language school at which the author worked as a volunteer teacher. In addition, a Montgomery

County outreach worker introduced us to the Resident Manager of a sprawling apartment

complex which housed many undocumented as well as documented Salvadoran migrants.

The Resident Manager proved to be an excellent "key informant' on Salvadoran household

composition. He served as 'patron" of the apartment complex, arranging for "coyotes" to bring

relatives and friends across the border. He placed undocumented individuals into households with

documented members in order to provide the former with some protection He also advised the

newcomers on survival strategies in the new environment, including job hunting. Through this

contact, we were introduced to households, and vouchsafed to household members, whom it

would not otherwise been possible to interview.

The interviews were conducted in Spanish by a bilingual Hispanic BLS economist. The first

Salvadoran household interviewed was that of a middle-aged woman and her 27 year-old

daughter who attended a 'Conversation Club" at which the author worked as a volunteer aide.

When scheduling this interview, we were told that the only other person who lived in their house

was a 23 year-old son. The night of the interview, another middle-aged woman was observed

watching television in the family's living-room. In asking if this other woman also lived in the

house, we were told that "she is just staying here.' In asking how long the woman had been

staying in the house, the daughter replied, "two years." We arranged to interview this other

woman as well. (It is noteworthy that the mother and daughter owned their townhouse so there

was no need to hide this other woman's presence from a landlord.)

On subsequent visits to other households recruited for the interviews, we would learn of the

existence of additional household members only after we had been in the house or apartment for
an hour or two. Especially in the course of late night interviews, one or two adult males whom

we had not been told about would arrive home about 10 P.M. There was never any attempt to

hide their presence from us. With the one exception of a female boarder who was a close friend of

the female head of household, boarders were considered very peripheral to the life of the

household, and their presence in the household was not spontaneously reported.

In one particular type of Salvadoran household, that of several unrelated young adult males,

household rosters were even more incomplete. This Hispanic household type has been termed the

"Ad Hoc household" by Montoya in a paper on Mexican agricultural workers in Oregon which he

presented at the Ethnographic Census Evaluation Research Seminar in l991 (Montoya, 1991).

The 'Ad Hoc' household" comes into being to fill the need for unrelated individuals to pool

resources in order to keep a roof over their heads. It also serves as an 'Receiving Station' for

newly-arrived, unattached Hispanics, who will hear about a vacancy in the household by "wordof-mouth' in the Hispanic community. In most cases, the newcomer will be taken to a

construction site or other workplace by an established member of the household and helped to

find employment. This assistance will even include the experienced worker giving some minimal

vocational training to the newcomer.

While the newcomer's situation will be well-known to the member who has helped him to make

ties to a job, the other household members might know very little to nothing about the newcomer.

In interviewing in a five member "Ad Hoc" household, we were surprised to learn that one

respondent did not know the names of some of the other men living in the apartment. While our

first thought was that this respondent might be trying to protect his housemates, we later learned

that the respondent had only been in the United States for two weeks, and he did not remember

the names of housemates he had seen but a few times.

In some cases, the head of the household was a legal resident, and the boarders were

undocumented. The reverse was also true. In households composed of several adult males, the

likelihood was that everyone was undocumented.

Table I shows the distribution of males and females 15 years of age and older who were reported

and observed in the 17 Salvadoran and 15 Non-Hispanic White households surveyed. The high

number of males in the Salvadoran households is noteworthy given the fact that 6 of the 17

households were female-headed. The expected shortage of males was canceled out by the

presence of six male and only two female boarders.
Table 1. Reported and observed household members in Salvadoran and

Non-Hispanic White Households

Salvadoran

Repd Obsd Diff %Diff

Males 32 36 4 11

Females 34 35 1 3

Total 66 71 5 7

Non-Hispanic White

Repd Obsd Diff %Diff

Males 25 25 0 00

Females 23 23 0 00

Total 48 48 0 00

There were no discrepancies between reported and observed household members in the NonHispanic White households compared to the I I % unreported males and 3 % unreported females

in the Salvadoran households. In Table 2. we see that the difference between Salvadoran and

Non-Hispanic households in reported vs. non-reported members approaches significance, with chi

square at the p = 0.09 level (chi square = 2.935). A Fisher's Exact 2-tailed test with correction for

continuity yielded a similar p value of p < .09 (p = .079)

Table 2. Households with and without unreported persons

With unrptd Without unrptd Total

Non-Hisp White 0 15 15

Salvadoran 3 14 17

Total 3 29 32

X2 = 2.935

p < .09
Potential problems exist in collecting complete household rosters even for some categories of

relatives who are integrated into the social life of the Salvadoran migrant household. This can be

best illustrated by the following excerpt from a respondent's lengthy account of the changing

composition of her household since she came to the United States:

Mrs. Ramozo recounted that she and her daughter, together with Mrs. Ramozo's mother,

brother, brother's wife, and their daughter, moved to their present house early in 1979.

After six months, her father came for a visit from El Salvador and returned to El Salvador

with Mrs. Ramozo's daughter. Mrs. Ramozo's stepmother, two half-sisters, and a nephew

came from El Salvador to stay in her house in 1981. Two months later, an uncle and a

brother-in-law came from El Salvador to stay with them. In October of 1981, her two

half-sisters, nephew, step-mother and brother-in-law moved to Chicago.

For purposes of the CPS, which attempts to measure the size of the U.S. labor force, we were

interested in learning whether or not any of the relatives who were described as "visiting" from El

Salvador for one or two months did any paid work while here. We were told, matter-of-factly,

that of course it was necessary for these visiting relatives to work in order to cover expenses

during their visit to the United States. (Parenthetically, the CPS does not ask about persons who

are Visiting in the household.)

Proxy Reporting

Structured interviews asking each household member for labor force information on all household

members 15 years of age and older were conducted in both the Salvadoran and Non-Hispanic

White households. Some interesting contrasts between Hispanics' and Non-Hispanics' proxy

reporting patterns have emerged, including evidence of greater intergenerational communication

and greater knowledge on the part of Hispanic parents about their children's job search and hours

worked.

For purposes of this paper, we will only be concerned with the effect of household status, i.e.,

boarder vs. family member, on proxy reporting of labor force characteristics. We were especially

interested to learn the effect of the boarder's marginal household role on family members'

knowledge of the boarder's labor force characteristics.

The numbers were too small to do reliable statistical tests of the data. However, the data suggest

that even though family members do not spontaneously list their boarders on the household roster,

they do know about their boarders' labor force characteristics.

Table 3 shows the percent of self-proxy agreement for reporting having worked last week. There

was 85 % agreement for family members reporting for boarders and 94% agreement for their

reports on other family members. In Table 4, which shows self-proxy agreement in occupational

classification at the one-digit level, the degree of agreement was again very high for family

member's reports for their boarders (100%) as well as their relative (96%). Table 5 shows the

same pattern of high self-proxy agreement in family members reporting "Industrial Classification"

at the one-digit level, for boarders (88 %) as well as other family members (94%).
Table 3. Self-proxy agreement on "worked last week"

Agree Disag Total %Agr

Fam/Bdr 11 2 13 85

Fam/Fatn 105 7 112 94

Total 116 9 125

Table 4. Self-proxy agreement on occupational class

Agree Disag Total %Agr

Fam/Bdr 8 0 8 100

Fam/Fatn 81 2 83 96

Total 89 2 91

Table 5. Self-proxy agreement on industrial class

Agree Disag Total %Agr

Fam/Bdr 7 1 8 88

Fam/Fatn 78 5 83 94

Total 85 6 91

Conclusions

Evidence from the small-scale ethnographic field study of reported household rosters in

Salvadoran and non-Hispanic White households suggests cultural differences in household

composition, concepts of household membership, and reporting patterns between the two cultural

groups. The finding that family members in Salvadoran households are generally knowledgeable

about the labor force characteristics of their boarders would seem to justify greater effort in

eliciting their presence in the household, not only for purposes of reducing the undercount of

Hispanics in the CPS, but for the promise of some description of the missing individuals' labor

force characteristics as well.
References

Bureau of the Census, Demographic Surveys Division, (1992) "CPS Information Report.”

April.(unpublished report)

Montoya, M.D., (1991) "Ethnographic Evaluation of the Behavioral Causes of Undercount:

Woodbum, Oregon. Paper presented to the Ethnographic Census Evaluation Research Seminar,

Suitland.