Migration, Social Networks, and Child Health in Mexican Families

This paper examines the consequences of parental migratory strategies for children in three types of Mexican families: those living with their migrant parents in the United States, those living with parents who migrated and returned to Mexico, and those living in Mexico with parents who have never migrated. Using data on 804 children from the Health and Migration Survey (HMS), we found significant differences in children's health across the three types of families. Results also revealed robust effects on child health of the size of immediate and extended social networks and migration experience after controlling for potential mediators such as mother's general health, receipt of social support, and child's age and sex. Findings suggest that social networks and migration affect children in complex ways, offering health benefits to those with migrant parents in U.S. households but not to those living with parents who migrated in the past and returned to Mexico. Key Words: child health, Mexican families, social networks. As the magnitude of U.S. immigration has grown since the 1980s, studies have begun to situate migration and its consequences in families. Consistent with the emergence of theories related to the new economics of migration, whereby families are "the appropriate units of analysis for migration" (Massey et al., 1993, p. 439; Stark, 1984, 1991), social scientists are now asking how migration behavior differentially affects family well-being (Mazzucato & Schans, 2011) and children's health (Donato 2000; Donato, Kanaiaupuni, & Stainback, 2003; Kanaiaupuni & Donato, 1999). These studies suggest significant consequences because of higher risks of union dissolution (Frank & Wildsmith, 2005) and family separation (Dreby, 2010; Kanaiaupuni, 2000; Lahaie, Hayes, Piper, & Heymann, 2009; Orellana, Thorne, Chee, & Lam, 2001). Another set of studies interrogates the relationship between migration and health without considering the dynamics and attributes of families. Much of this work revolves around the epidemiological "Hispanic Paradox," which describes the better health outcomes of Latinos in the United States compared to other groups who are wealthier, more educated, and better medically served. Such findings - that there are relative health advantages for a limited set of outcomes among Latinos despite their high-risk socioeconomic profiles (Markides & Coreil, 1986; Palloni & Arias, 2004; Singh & Siahpush, 2002; Singh & Yu, 1 996) - have been most extensively documented for Mexicans (Guendelman, 2000; Guendelman, Gould, Hudes, & Eskenazi, 1990; Gutmann, Frisbie, DeTurk, & Blanchard, 1998; Palloni & Morenoff, 2001). Despite insights from these studies, a comprehensive understanding of the effects of family migratory behavior on children's health remains elusive. One reason is that few analyses rely on binational data that give equal treatment to the migration - health relationship in both origins and destinations and, at the same time, collect data on the economic and social attributes of family members. Instead, many studies rely either on data collected in countries of origin or countries of destination to understand migrant -nonmigrant differentials in health and, more generally, to understand how the processes of migration and health unfold over the life course. In this paper, we build on prior studies by using a binational data set that contains detailed information about Mexican families. The data permit us to differentiate children's health in three types of Mexican families: those currently migrating and living in the United States, those who migrated but returned to Mexico, and those living in Mexico without U.S. experience. Understanding differences by family migration status offers two important advantages. First, it offers a unique opportunity to focus on whether and how parents' migration affects the lives of children by comparing their health and well-being to children whose parents have never migrated (Dreby, 2007, 2010; Dreby & Stutz, 2009; Mazzucato, 2008b; Parrenas, 2005). …