Archiving Data on the IWPR Population

About This Grant

Project Summary This project aims to harmonize and share data about immigrants who are without permanent residence (IWPR). Few national surveys include questionnaire items on immigrants’ permanent residence, and when available, these surveys are often met with skepticism due to their questionable validity. And while some organizations use indirect demographic methods to produce estimates of IWPR sub-populations, it is difficult for researchers to obtain information about detailed groups of interest. This is an important shortcoming given that the IWPR population makes up one-third of all adults and children born abroad. In addition, nearly 80 percent of children of the IWPR population are U.S.-born citizens. In this project we harmonize data across existing data sets (American Community Survey, Department of Homeland Security admission data, and demographic estimates of mortality, emigration, and ACS survey coverage rates) that together provide a detailed demographic estimates and projections of the IWPR population and its children. We will deposit the harmonized data and documentation in Data Sharing for Demographic Research archive (DSDR). Specifically, the project has three aims. First, it will harmonize data in order to produce detailed estimates of the size of the IWPR population and its children ages 0-17. These estimates will be produced by harmonizing and layering pre-existing public data and using long-standing residual methods based on an innovative, transparent, peer-reviewed methodology. The estimates will be available by year, age, sex, year of arrival, age at arrival, duration of U.S. residence, and visa classification. The project will also produce estimates of the population’s dynamics, such as annual in-flows, out-flows, and net growth. Second, the project will project the IWPR population and its children 10 years into the future under various scenarios. These scenarios will vary both demographic conditions (e.g., high versus low levels of inflows) and potential program changes (e.g., eligibility rules for SNAP). Third, the project will deposit the data from Aims 1 and 2 into DSDR for dissemination to researchers, along with accessible and comprehensive documentation. The confidentiality of human subjects will be protected by collapsing these data and providing all data at the national level. Understanding the changing size and characteristics of the IWPR population is important to assess this group’s public health and services delivery needs, especially given they comprise nearly one-third of the adult and child population born abroad generally. Compared with other individuals born abroad, IWPR individuals and their children have high rates of poverty and food insecurity, and they also have low access to health care and health insurance. By providing accessible data on the IWPR population and its children, this project can help planners, service providers, and researchers better evaluate child health and well-being.