What grabbed my attention is just how predictable welfare usage by country of origin is. Table 4 of the CIS report shows welfare usage rates of immigrant households with children by householder's country of origin. Near the bottom of the list are affluent, functional nations like Great Britain and South Korea. Topping the list are places you don't want to be (for more than a week or two, anyway) like Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
Picking up on an old habit, I looked at mean national IQ of the 20 sending countries listed and welfare usage rates of immigrants from those countries who were residing in the US in 2009. The correlation is an inverse .57 (p = .01). That relationship is tempered by Indian immigrants, who constitute a conspicuous exception to the general rule (only those from Great Britain use fewer welfare programs than they do). Removing India from the regression ups the correlation to .64 (p = .00). The Indian demographic landscape is an incredibly complicated one, but it's clear that Indians living in the US are not representative of the country they were born in.
6 comments:
Whether or not Great Britain constitutes a "functional" country is debatable.
Colombia's relatively low numbers (by Hispanic standards) is interesting, given its problems. It's a much more unstable society than neighboring Ecuador (look at their numbers).
Ecuador also comes off as much worse than Peru. I suspect the differences have to do with the social classes from each country that tend to emigrate to the United States. As with India, the Colombian and Peruvian immigrants probably aren't from among the lower classes.
Peter
Anecdotal, but my Chilean uncle (who lives in the US) is a pilot. His father is a doctor in Chile. My Peruvian aunt is a teacher in the US, and her father is also a doctor in Peru. They both look Spanish. My guess is that immigrants from Central America are less likely to be from the middle and upper middle classes in their sending countries.
at anon,
colombia was a very stable country (and is still very literate) until economic collapse only a matter of years ago. i'd anticipate that many of their immigrants are well educated.
It's disappointing that Canadian welfare use, while low, is as high as it is. I wonder if some number of these "Canadians" are actually of Jamaican origin or something. I've never met a white middle class Canadian taking welfare (and there are plenty of these folks in LA e.g.)
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