IPRC-IDR-2019-01: A Policy Approach to Overcome Pre-immigration Barriers to Participation in the Latino Immigrant Community
Javier M. Rodriguez, Rafael A. Jimeno, Sandra P. Garcia, Carlos A. Echeverria-Estrada
Policies to encourage socio-political participation of Latinx immigrants in the United States heavily rely on the primacy of assimilation processes resulting from immigrants’ exposure to the American political system alone. However, this approach overlooks the potential layers of complexity fostered by pre-immigration factors and how these interact with immigrants’ experiences in the U.S. We conduct a multinomial logit analysis using data from the 2006 Latino National Survey and emergent research on the impact of pre-immigration experiences to determine what factors can both activate participation and be influenced by institutions and policy makers in the U.S. Though we find that low levels of socio-political participation among Latinx immigrants strongly correlate with low levels of pre-immigration participation, for the outlier cases we analyze what factors contribute to increase participation once in the U.S. Results demonstrate the need for political parties and organizations to increase the long-term investment in young Latinx immigrants.
IPRC-IDR-2019-02: Political Trust and Native American Electoral Participation: An Analysis of Survey Data from Nevada and South Dakota
Jean Schroedel, Aaron Berg, Joseph Dietrich, Javier M. Rodriguez
This research analyzes the impact of political trust on Native American electoral participation, using survey responses from roughly 1,500 Native Americans living in South Dakota and Nevada. The in-person survey taking was conducted at locations in Native communities and with the support of tribal leaders, allowing us to overcome many of the methodological issues that have hampered previous studies. We found much higher levels of electoral participation in tribal elections than in non-tribal elections. Respondents expressed high levels of distrust in nontribal government and voting methods, and this distrust has a surprisingly powerful impact on the decision to participate in nontribal elections. We suggest that historical trauma and ongoing discrimination are the primary causes of distrust among Native Americans and find support for this in the observed differences in levels of trust between South Dakota and Nevada.
IPRC-IDR-2019-03: Infant and Maternal Mortality Rates and the Political Realignment in the U.S., 1915 – 2017
Javier M. Rodriguez, Byengseon Bae
It is well-known that health outcomes are largely influenced by social determinants of health that policies impact on. Given the dramatic change in the policies of the two parties since the political realignment of 1964, we hypothesize that there would be different patterns in public health outcomes before and after 1964. Using the methods of de-trending the data and multiple regression models with cross-product terms, we found the different patterns of infant and maternal mortality rates explained by President’s political party before and after 1964. This result not only affirms the politics hypothesis that social determinants of health are political, but also suggests how to reduce infant and maternal mortality.
IPRC-IDR-2019-04: High Vulnerable Communities and the Affordable Care Act: Health Insurance Coverage Effects, 2010-2018
Wei, Ye, Javier M. Rodriguez
Initially implemented in 2014 in some U.S. states, the Medicaid expansions under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) aimed to make health insurance coverage more accessible to the low-income population. This paper aims to quantify the impact of the ACA Medicaid expansions on insurance coverage among racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, single mothers, veterans, and low-education whites—i.e., the sectors of the population identified with some of the highest healthcare needs. We focus on individuals 18-64 years of age earning 138% or less of the federal poverty level from the American Community Survey, 2010-2018 (n=2,927,402). We use difference-in-differences (DD) and difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) approaches with propensity scores matched comparison groups to estimate pre-post ACA insurance coverage differences between individuals living in states that participated in the ACA Medicaid expansions and those living in non-participating states, and to estimate if such differences vary across subgroups. We find that insurance coverage rates increased for all subgroups; yet, the ACA benefits have not been evenly distributed across them. Low-education whites, non-Hispanic whites, and non-Hispanic Native Americans exhibited the highest improvements in insurance coverage. Our results contribute to the understanding of recent trends in racial and socioeconomic disparities in healthcare and the appropriate policy prescriptions to ameliorate them.
IPRC-IDR-2019-05: The Covid-19 Pandemic, Immigrants, and Minority Communities in the United States.
Carlos Echeverria-Estrada, Javier Rodriguez, Claudia Cáceres
The purpose of the present chapter is, to offer a global account of the harmful effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the U.S. society overall and, particularly, on poor, racial and ethnic, and immigrant communities. We describe the current U.S. political context, pre-existing social inequalities, and how they have interacted, resulting in a weak, and many times incongruous, response against the spread of SARS-CoV-2. We present a statistical analysis to illustrate how non-white/white residential segregation interacts with the concentration of immigrant communities to produce higher infection rates across U.S. counties. We conclude by offering a summary of possible policy solutions that could be, or could have been, implemented to ameliorate the detrimental economic and health effects of the pandemic.
IPRC-IDR-2019-06: Daily-life Discrimination, Race, and Health: When Income and Education Don’t Give You What You Want
Javier M. Rodriguez, Carlos Echeverria-Estrada, Wenlan Miao, Shervin Assari
There is growing evidence on the negative effects of daily-life discrimination on health outcomes and their interactions with indicators of socioeconomic status. However, less has been studied about the role that education and income have on different discriminatory experiences depending on the race of the individual. Using data from the national survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS I) on eight measures of daily-life discrimination experiences and an overall index of discrimination, this study compares the experiences of black and white persons across educational levels and income. We apply seemingly unrelated regressions and generalized linear models to disentangle differential effects of education and income by race. We find that the disparities in the health of black people compared to whites in the United States are substantive and exacerbate in the top cohorts of society. Results show that black people increase their experiences of discrimination as education and income increase. This situation highlights a policy conundrum, given that increasing income and education is a desirable course of action to improve overall health outcomes. Yet, by bluntly doing so, racial disparities in discrimination—and therefore in health outcomes—can exacerbate. Policy implications, the role of public-private partnerships and advocacy organizations in successful initiatives to address discrimination in high-education and high-income cohorts, and examples of strategies in the literature are also discussed.
IPRC-IDR-2019-07: Mortality Rate Trends in the United States by Race, Ethnicity and Education, 1959-2016
Javier M. Rodriguez, Carlos Echeverria-Estrada, Francisco Castrillon, Byengseon Bae, Rixin Wen, Alicia Davis
In this research project we are assembling an analysis-friendly dataset of all-cause and cause-specific mortality rate trends by race, ethnicity, and education in the United States. Data and methods. The data are from the Multiple Cause of Death files, the Census Bureau, and the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program. Standard demographic methods are implemented. Results. We aim to prescribe policies and public interventions useful to shrink racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in all-cause and cause-specific mortality rates.
IPRC-IDR-2019-08: Police Fatal Encounters and Birth Outcomes by Race and Ethnicity in California
Javier M. Rodriguez, Carlos Echeverria-Estrada
The purpose of this research is to determine whether police fatal encounters in the United States affect important health outcomes, such as pre-term (PB) and low-weight births (LBW) in the proximate geographic areas surrounding the encounters and discuss policy prescriptions to help diminish the negative birth effects of police fatal encounters.
Considering the existing evidence that critical infant health indicators––PB and LBW––are affected by spillover effects that emanate from contextual stressors, two hypotheses stem: a) Mothers who live in the vicinity of a fatal encounter will register worse rates of PB and LBW after the encounter compared to before the encounter and to mothers who were not living in the immediate vicinity at the time of the encounter; and b) the effect of police fatal encounters will be independent of potential socio-economic and contextual confounders and of established risk factors for PB and LBW. Data and Methods. Using individual birth records from California between 2000 and 2016, rigorous statistical and geo-referenced analysis will be conducted to test both hypotheses.
IPRC-IDR-2019-09: Life Expectancy and Political Voice Among Native American Communities in the United States, 1959-2016
Javier M. Rodriguez, Jean Schroedel, Aaron Berg, Rixin Wen
The purpose of the study is to analyze the effect of differential all-cause mortality rates among Native Americans on their political voice. Method. Applying life table simulations on mortality data between 1959 through 2016 from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), we will estimate the number of Native American voters who would have survived if they had mortality rates comparable to other racial groups. We will also estimate the probability that these hypothetical survivors would have turned out to vote in recent elections. And finally, we will estimate the political representative effects of eliminating from the possible electorate the political voice of those Native Americans who died prematurely—e.g., by estimating if their turnout would have changed electoral outcomes.
IPRC-IDR-2019-10: A Policy Approach to Overcome Pre-Immigration Barriers to Participation in the Latino Immigrant Community
Javier M. Rodriguez, Rafael A. Jimeno, Sandra P. Garcia, Carlos Echeverria-Estrada
Policies to encourage socio-political participation of Latinx immigrants in the United States heavily rely on the primacy of assimilation processes resulting from immigrants’ exposure to the American political system alone. However, this approach overlooks the potential layers of complexity fostered by pre-immigration factors and how these interact with immigrants’ experiences in the U.S. We conduct a multinomial logit analysis using data from the 2006 Latino National Survey and emergent research on the impact of pre-immigration experiences to determine what factors can both activate participation and be influenced by institutions and policy makers in the U.S. Though we find that low levels of socio-political participation among Latinx immigrants strongly correlate with low levels of pre-immigration participation, for the outlier cases we analyze what factors contribute to increase participation once in the U.S. Results demonstrate the need for political parties and organizations to increase the long-term investment in young Latinx immigrants.
IPRC-IDR-2019-11: Latinx Pre-Immigration Ideological Preferences and Party Identification in the United States
Rafael A. Jimeno, Javier M. Rodriguez, John A. Garcia, Carlos Echeverria-Estrada
Much political behavior research highlights the role of post-immigration experiences in framing Latinx immigrants’ preferences in the United States. We contend that immigrants’ pre-migration political socialization also shapes their current views, political engagement, and ideological orientations. Findings from a unique set of 146 interviews on political party choice before and after migration suggest that Latinx immigrants exhibit consistency of political orientations for party choice across borders. In other words, home-country political and ideological orientations help guide choice of U.S. political party. Pre-immigration variables are thus crucial for a more comprehensive assessment of Latinx immigrant political psychology and behavior.