Abstract

PIP: Immigration patterns in the US in the last 50 years have defied the conventional wisdom that most international migrants are young, working-age males. Since 1930 more than 1/2 of all immgrants to the US have been women, and 2/3 have been women or children. Data show that the persistently large number of marriages of foreign-born or native-born US residents to alien women, coupled with increasing government regulation of immigration and a strong policy bias against the seperation of spouces and children, has resulted in the preponederance of women and children in immigration since 1930. The shift in the sex and age distribution of immgrants in the US in 1930 can also be attributed to the effectiveness of the 1924 quota laws in drastically reducing the enormous influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, when the remaing flow was dominated by wives and children. Traditional sex role behavior has played a significant role in determining both the level and patterns of immigration to the US--while large inflows of economically motivated males induced 2nd flows of women and children before 1930, the 1940s saw the flow of foreign-born wives and children of US servicemen in the wake of Korean and Vietnam wars. An analysis of the Immigration and Naturalization Service data tapes for the 3.6 million fiscal 1972-79 arriving immigrants shows that almost 1/4 are children under 15. Except in this age group, females outnumber males in all other age groups. While immigrants are predictably younger than the US born population regardless of sex, immigrant women are more likely to be married than men, and both are more likely to be married than their US born peers. Immigrant women are substantially less likely to report labor market experience than immigrant men. Unlike US workers, immigrants tend to cluster at the top or bottom of the occupational scale, regardless of sex. Immigrant women are also clustered in the sterotypical female dominated occupations.