Abstract
The population growth in the United States of the immigrant population has been long been a common occurrence. Within this issue are the lives of children in immigrant families who are affected. There are significant consequences for their children’s outcomes. This study attempts to gain an in-depth understanding of the challenges faced by children of immigrants, and the factors that affect their development and outcome in their adulthood. The researchers present a selective review of the literature on children of immigrants in the U.S., focusing on key research themes including the main factors that affect the outcome of the children in their adulthood. This quantitative research aimed to analyze data on children of immigrants’ families and the variables correlated with their father’s background in earnings, employment, and education. The researchers used the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), which ran the longitudinal study from 1991-2006. Using this secondary data, the researchers ran regression analysis in SPSS to analyze the variables. After analyzing the data using our hypothesis of immigrant father’s contributions to their child’s outcomes, the researchers found that our hypothesis was partly substantiated with significance. We found significance between father’s work status, education and family’s economic status and a child’s likelihood to have higher education in the future. The researchers believe future studies could specify more accurately about the father’s type of employment rather than generalizing employed or unemployed. In addition, family’s economic status could be defined using numerical values rather than categorical labels. Ultimately, the research found that an immigrant father’s background does have a positive correlation with their child’s future outcomes. Suggestions for future research in this are increasingly important area of research is presented as well as recommendations to have more resources and outreach to allow easier access for this population.