Mexican-American Women Navigate School and Work More Successfully Than Men; Bilingual Infants Develop Language at Same Rate as English-Only Peers

New Studies Focus on Latino Education, Language, Health, and Politics

Mexican-American women in New York City fare better in school than their male counterparts, according to a new study presented at a national conference at the Harvard Graduate School of Education on May 2, 2002. The study, "Gender, Ethnicity, and Race in School and Work Outcomes of Second Generation Mexican Americans," also showed that only 19 percent of Mexican-American men in 1990 were upwardly mobile professionally, compared to 31 percent of women, and only nine percent of men worked in professional/technical jobs, compared to 17 percent of women.

The study was among those released at "Latinos at the Crossroads," an interdisciplinary conference sponsored jointly by HGSE and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and the Nieman Foundation, and is among a total of 21 studies in a newly released book, Latinos: Remaking America (University of California Press and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, 2002), edited by Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco and Mariela Páez from HGSE. The new studies present landmark research on Latino education, health, language, and politics. It is the first comprehensive book systematically examining major aspects of the Latino population of the United States, now the nation's largest minority.

"The Latino population of the United States at over 35 million people is now larger than the entire Canadian population. In just two generations, the United States will have the second largest number of Latinos in the world — after Mexico," says Suárez-Orozco. "Latinos: Remaking America is designed to offer solid research guideposts as we move forth with this unprecedented transformation in the history of the United States. It is our intention and hope that the new findings will help broaden understanding — not only among scholars and policy makers — but also in the general public about the profound demographic and cultural changes taking place in their communities."

Findings

Education

• Mexican-American Women Navigate School and Work More Successfully Than Men According to research conducted and analyzed by Robert Smith (Barnard College), Mexican-American girls are more selective in choosing a high school that will ensure greater academic success and ethnic diversity than their male counterparts. They also are expected to return home after school to care for siblings and help with housework. As a result, they are more likely to be upwardly mobile professionally and to hold jobs that require "soft" skills. They are also more likely to look for work using formal school or professional contacts.
  Mexican-American boys do little (if any) research in selecting a high school and end up attending their local zone school where there is little ethnic diversity. They are more likely to join gangs that ultimately lead to them dropping out of school. Their parents do not give them as much household responsibility, and this unstructured free time leads to increased gang involvement. Professionally, 19 percent of Mexican-American men in 1990 were upwardly mobile (compared to 31 percent of women), and only nine percent worked in professional/technical jobs (compared to 17 percent of women)."Gender helps the women acquire more human capital in school, leads at home to their developing [soft] skills . and offers them a gendered and growing labor market niche in the mainstream economy," says Smith. "Moreover, the consequences of this gendered capital are cumulative. Women stay in school longer or go to better schools, which we hypothesize precludes their attaching a stigmatized meaning to their ethnicity, gives them better skills, and opens up access to more and better ties beyond their immediate networks."

Language Development

• Bilingual Infants Develop Language at Same Rate as English-Only Peers In a comparative study of 44 monolingual and 29 bilingual infants, researchers found that the average age of canonical babbling (or the development of mature syllables) was four days apart, in favor of the bilinguals. According to the study, "Bilingual Infants: Mapping the Research Agenda," bilingual children also learned language-specific phonology as fast and as well as monolinguals. In expressive vocabulary, as in phonology, when it came to the ability to learn words, the bilinguals did as well as the monolinguals."The widely held belief that bilingual children are deficient in their language knowledge is the result of a monolingual bias in measurement instruments," says researcher Barbara Zurer Pearson (University of Massachusetts, Amherst). "Standardized measures are all referenced to performance of groups of monolingual children, whose total language knowledge is in one language. For bilinguals, such comparisons fail to credit the portion of their knowledge that is in the second language. Infants showed no statistical difference between monolingual and bilingual groups when the comparison groups were adequately matched and when appropriate controls for a monolingual bias in measurement was imposed."

  In a related study of older children, Zurer Pearson and colleagues at the University of Miami found that children who were exposed to only Spanish in the home until age 5 had stronger Spanish skills at age 10, even without Spanish instruction in school, than children who had been introduced to English before age 2. In addition, the English skills of the two groups at age 10 were equal. "This suggests that the practice of speaking only Spanish in the home may be justified as a strategy for ensuring bilingualism later in life, especially given that there are so few venues in the United States for Spanish instruction for children," says Zurer Pearson.

Health

• Latinos Are Three Times More Likely to Lack Health Insurance than Whites Using data from the March 1998 and February 1997 Current Population Surveys, researchers E. Richard Brown and Hongjian Yu (University of California, Los Angeles) found that Latinos — both overall and in all subgroups — are far less likely to have employment-based health insurance (EBHI) and thus far more likely to be uninsured than non-Latino white employees. Just over half (53.7 percent) of Latinos receive EBHI through their own or a family member's employment, compared to 80.2 percent non-Latino white employees.Latino employees' lower EBHI rates result in an uninsured rate three times as high as that of non-Latino whites: 39.3 percent versus 13.3 percent.

  Latinos' low rates of EBHI and their resulting high uninsured rates are due in large part to the low proportion of Latino employees whose employers offer job-based insurance. Three in 10 Latino employees (30.5 percent) work for an employer who does not offer health benefits to any worker; this is twice the proportion of non-Latino white employees (13.6 percent). This disparity between Latino and non-Latino whites prevails across most demographic, labor force, and income groups.

  "In the United States, employment is the most important source of health insurance coverage for the nonelderly population; 81 percent of those with any coverage receive it through their own or a family member's employment," says Brown. "This low proportion of Latino employees who work for an employer that offers health benefits suggests that Latinos experience a systematic disadvantage in the labor market--an apparent form of labor market inequity or abuse."

Politics

• Latinos Participate Less in Political Activities Compared with their Anglo counterparts, Latinos participate much less in nonelectoral political activities, according to Lisa J. Montoya (University of Texas, Austin) who analyzed data from the Latino National Political Survey. Fifty percent of Latino citizens reported engaging in at least one political activity in the 12 months prior to the survey, compared with 62 percent of Anglos. Noncitizens were much less likely to participate than other Latinos. Fifteen to 22 percent of noncitizens living in the United States for more than 10 years reported one political act, while only 13 percent of noncitizens living in the United States for six to 10 years reported political activity.Although their overall participation rate is low, Latinos are just as likely to participate in politics as Anglos, after controlling for socioeconomic status. "While it takes time for noncitizens and new citizens to learn about the political system, Latinos are interested in politics," says Montoya. "They must overcome the barriers of low educational attainment and lower incomes like other Americans."Montoya suggests the most consistent predictor of Latino participation has been the mobilizing role of membership in social and professional organizations. This especially holds true for women and lower-income noncitizens. Belonging to a social organization makes it much more likely that Latinos will participate in politics because these groups provide information and opportunities for participation.

  Examples of nonelectoral activities include signing a petition, writing a letter to a public official, attending a public meeting, wearing a campaign button, attending political meetings, working for a party or candidate, and contributing money to an individual candidate or a political party.

Background

The Bureau of Census claims that by the year 2050 a full quarter of the U.S. population will be of Latino origin--that is, nearly 100 million people tracing their ancestry to the Spanish-speaking, Latin American, and Caribbean worlds. More Latinos than African Americans are currently attending U.S. schools; yet, research on these populations is lacking. "This book brings together some of the leading minds in the scholarly study of the Latino population of the United States," says Suárez-Orozco.

Latinos: Remaking America is edited by Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco and Mariela Páez, and is published by the University of California Press and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. The research studies in the book and released at the "Latinos at the Crossroads" conference are based on presentations given originally at the conference "Latinos in the 21st Century: Mapping the Research Agenda," held in April 2000 at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and cosponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

Suárez-Orozco is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and co-director of the Harvard Immigration Project, the largest longitudinal study of adolescent immigrants' adaptation to the United States.

Páez is a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University works to increase knowledge of the cultures, histories, environment, and contemporary affairs of Latin America; foster cooperation and understanding among the people of the Americas; and contribute to democracy, social progress, and sustainable development throughout the hemisphere.

The conferences were supported by the Spencer Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the W. T. Grant Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

Experts Available

The following contributors to Latinos: Remaking America are available for comment and further information:

• Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 617-495-4864, marcelo_suarez-orozco@harvard.edu
• Mariela Páez, Research Assistant and Doctoral Candidate, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 617-495-3096, mariela_paez@gse.harvard.edu
• Robert Smith, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Barnard College, 212-854-3663, rsmith@barnard.edu
• Barbara Zurer Pearson, Research Project Manager, Department of Communication Disorders, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 413-545-5023, bpearson@comdis.umass.edu
• E. Richard Brown, Director of the Center for Health Policy Research, University of California, Los Angeles, 310-794-0812, erbrown@ucla.edu
• Lisa J. Montoya, Lecturer, Center for Mexican-American Studies, University of Texas, Austin, 512-773-7185, lmontoya@mail.la.utexas.edu

For more information or to arrange an interview, contact Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco at 617-495-4864, Christine Sanni at 617-496-5873, or Margaret R. Haas at 617-496-1884.