California’s Immigrant Families and Welfare Reform

This innovative study matched state and federal administrative data sets to provide both a snapshot of California's immigrant population and analyses of how immigrant households enter and leave public assistance and support themselves financially. Comparisons of interest included immigrant and native families; naturalized citizens and non-citizens; refugees, undocumented immigrants, and legal entrants; welfare recipients and non-recipients; immigrants by ethnicity and country of origin; single- and two-parent families; and immigrant cohorts by date of arrival in the United States.

In carrying out this study, UC DATA developed a new longitudinal data set containing survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau matched to administrative records from California's Departments of Social Services and Economic Development. State administrative records provided wage and program participation information about labor force participants from the late 1980s through 2001, while Census Bureau data added rich information about the demographic and economic characteristics of individuals and families.

Henry Brady, Principal Investigator

Professor and Director, UC DATA

University of California, Berkeley