Social and Economic Well-Being of Latino Immigrants in New Rural Destinations

Everett Henderson, Urban Institute
Randy Capps, Urban Institute
William A. Kandel, U.S. Department of Agriculture (DOA)
Heather L. Koball, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

Immigration is fueling rapid Latino population growth in rural communities across the United States. At the same time, immigrants are dispersing to new destinations in the Midwest and Southeast. For the first time in U.S. history, half of all rural Latinos now live outside the traditional Southwestern settlement region. In this paper, we use Census 2000 data to address two research questions: (1) How does the social and economic well-being of Latino immigrants in rural areas of new destination states compare to other areas? (2) How does the well-being of Latino immigrants in rural areas of new destination states compare to that of native born residents? Our multivariate results indicate a clear and monotonic correlation between increasing levels of U.S. experience and improvements in measures of well-being for Latino immigrants. This particular trend occurs more gradually for Latino immigrants in new rural destinations, but it arguably still occurs.