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A growing body of sociological research has shown that racial identification is not only fluid, but crucially depends on other individual- and societal-level factors. When such factors are also associated with socioeconomic outcomes such as earnings, estimates of the disadvantage experienced by individuals because of how they identify racially obtained from standard regression models may be biased. We illustrate this potential bias using data from a large-scale survey conducted by the Mexican census bureau. This survey is the first by the government agency since the country’s independence to include a question on black identification. We find evidence of a substantial bias in estimates of racial disadvantage. Results from our initial models treating racial self-identification as an exogenous predictor indicate that black men have higher earnings than non-black men. However, when we use an instrumental variables model that treats racial self-identification as endogenous, that is, as a function of the same unobserved characteristics as individuals’ earnings, we find a significant negative effect of black identification on earnings. While previous studies have acknowledged the endogeneity of race, ours is the first to explicitly model racial self-identification as an endogenous predictor to obtain an unbiased estimate of its effect on individuals’ socioeconomic conditions.

NSF award funds collaboration between scholars at the University of Maryland and the University of Pennsylvania to study the effects of supply-side and demand-side policies

Research has documented a negative association between women’s educational attainment and early sexual intercourse, union formation, and pregnancy. However, the implications that school progression relative to age may have for the timing and order of such transitions are poorly understood. In this article, I argue that educational attainment has different implications depending on a student’s progression through school grades relative to her age. Using month of birth and age-at-school-entry policies to estimate the effect of advanced school progression by age, I show that it accelerates the occurrence of family formation and sexual onset among teenage women in Mexico. Focusing on girls aged 15–17 interviewed by a national survey, I find that those who progress through school ahead of their birth cohort have a higher probability of having had sex, been pregnant, and cohabited by the time of interview. I argue that this pattern of behaviors is explained by experiences that lead them to accelerate their transition to adulthood compared with same-age students with fewer completed school grades, such as exposure to relatively older peers in school and completing academic milestones earlier in life. Among girls who got pregnant, those with an advanced school progression by age are more likely to engage in drug use, alcohol consumption, and smoking before conception; more likely to have pregnancy-related health complications; and less likely to attend prenatal care visits. Thus, an advanced school progression by age has substantial implications for the health and well-being of young women, with potential intergenerational consequences.

Is occupational stratification responsible for social inequality in old age disability in Mexico?

Mónica Caudillo, Maryland Population Research Center // Key words: Adolescents, Crime, Violence, Demography, Fertility; 2017-006

Climate migration across contexts, gender, and the life course: an examination in contemporary Mexico

Who Returns to Mexico? A Human Capital Selection Approach to Rural and Urban Mexican Undocumented Immigrant Return versus Aging in the United States