Children of Immigrants

Excerpt from The No Child Left Behind Act from “The New Demography of American Schools”

Between 14 and 16 million immigrants entered the country during the 1990s, up from 10 million

during the 1980s and 7 million during the 1970s.

Immigration flows in the 1990s far exceeded those in any decade in the nation’s history. Legal immigration ranged from 700,000 to more than one million people a year during the 1990s, while undocumented migration added an estimated 500,000 foreign-born people a year by the end of the decade. This high pace of immigration was sustained during 2000–04, with the foreign-born population increasing by over 1 million a year.

The total foreign-born population passed 34 million in 2004, according to the U.S. Current Population Survey. This total is more than three million people higher than in 2000 and more than triple the figure of 10 million in 1970. The foreign-born share of the U.S. population more than doubled from less than 5 percent in 1970 to almost 12 percent in 2004. With sustained high levels of immigration, the foreign-born population may reach 42–43 million and account for over 13 percent of the total U.S. population by 2010. Although in absolute numbers the foreign-born population is at a record high, the foreign-born share of the population will remain below the peaks of over 14 percent during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Children of Immigrants Increase to One in Five School-Age Children

Sustained high levels of immigration have also led to a rapid increase in the number of children with immigrant parents.  By 2000, immigrants represented one in nine of all U.S. residents, but their children represented one in five of all children under age 18. Children of immigrants represented an even higher share—one in four—of all school-age children who were low-income, defined by eligibility for the National School Lunch Program.

The relatively large share of children with immigrant parents is due in part to higher fertility among immigrant women, and to the fact that more immigrant women than U.S.-born women are of childbearing age (Ford 1990; Forste and Tienda 1996). Since immigrants on average have lower incomes than U.S. natives, a higher share of children of immigrants are lower-income than children of natives (Reardon-Anderson, Capps, and Fix 2002).

The share of children of immigrants among the school-age population has also grown rapidly, from six percent in 1970 to 19 percent in 2000. By 2000 there were 11 million children of immigrants out of 58 million total children enrolled in PK through 12th grade.  Because immigrants have most of their children after arriving in the United States, about three-quarters of children of immigrants are native-born, while about one-quarter are foreign-born. In 2000 there were three million foreign-born children, accounting for five percent of all school-age children, up from two percent of children in 1970.  The share of children who are first-generation immigrants increases in the upper grades.

In 2000, 16 percent of all students in pre-kindergarten were children of immigrants, but only two percent were foreign-born. In the upper grades (6 to 12), children of immigrants composed 19 percent of the total student population, while the foreign-born represented seven percent of the total. In the upper grades, over one-third of all children of immigrants were first-generation, compared with only one-eighth in pre-kindergarten.  Rapidly rising immigration means that immigrants represent an increasing share of all parents giving birth each year. Thus the highest share of children with immigrant parents occurs among children who were born most recently. Following this age distribution, there are more children of immigrants in the lower grades, with the highest share in kindergarten.