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Stipica Mudrazija, Sofia G Ayala, Public Benefits Use for Hispanic and non-Hispanic Older Immigrants in the United States, Public Policy & Aging Report, Volume 34, Issue 1, 2024, Pages 31–33, https://doi.org/10.1093/ppar/prad029
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The United States has the largest immigrant population of any country in the world with about 45 million people born outside of the country (Budiman et al., 2020). Hispanic immigrants make up more than 44% of all immigrants, followed by non-Hispanic Asian (27%), non-Hispanic White (18%), and non-Hispanic Black (9%) immigrants. Immigrant and native populations in the United States use public benefits at different rates and levels. The overall participation in a broad range of safety net programs is higher among immigrant-headed households than nonimmigrant-headed households, and the difference is primarily attributable to their higher use of noncash programs such as Medicaid and food stamps. In 2012, for example, immigrant households had 19 and 18 percentage point higher participation rates, respectively, in these two programs, whereas the use of cash supports (e.g., Supplemental Security Income [SSI], Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) was only marginally higher for immigrants (Camarota, 2015). Looking at trends over the 1995–2018 period and focusing on low-educated households with children, another study finds that the overall use of public benefits is consistently higher for immigrants, roughly varying between 5 percentage points in late 1990s to over 10 percentage points in more recent years (Huang, 2021). Excluding healthcare benefits (e.g., Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program), however, low-educated immigrant households with children had generally lower use of public benefits that their nonimmigrant peers since late 1990s, with a decline in difference around the time of the Great Recession and another increase in more recent years. Although important, these numbers do not account for compositional differences between immigrants and nonimmigrants in the United States, in particular as it relates to their socioeconomic and health profiles, among others (e.g. Bitler and Hoynes, 2013; Borjas, 2011). Recent research aimed at addressing this shortcoming finds that if immigrants had the same sociodemographic profile as nonimmigrants, that is, assuming no difference in their age, racial/ethnic and gender composition, relationship status, and educational attainment, among others, their participation in public benefit programs would have been sharply lower and well below that of US-born individuals (Huang, et al., 2021).
