EXPLAINING THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF MEXICAN-IMMIGRANT WELFARE BEHAVIORS: THE IMPORTANCE OF EMPLOYMENT-RELATED CULTURAL REPERTOIRES.

Abstract

Social scientists generally seek to explain welfare-related behaviors in terms of economic choice, social structural, or culture of poverty theories. Because such explanations incompletely account for nativity differences in public assistance receipt among those of Mexican origin, this paper draws upon the sociology of migration and culture literatures to develop alternative materialist-based cultural repertoire hypotheses to explain the welfare behaviors of Mexican immigrants. We argue that immigrants from Mexico arrive and work in the United States under circumstances fostering employment-based cultural repertoires that, compared with natives and other immigrant groups, encourage less welfare participation (in part because such repertoires lead to faster welfare exits) and more post-welfare employment, especially in states with relatively more generous welfare-policies. Using individual-level data predating Welfare Reform from multiple panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), merged with state-level information on welfare-benefit levels, we assess these ideas by examining immigrant-group differences in welfare receipt, retention, and transition to employment across locales with varying levels of welfare benefits. Overall, the results are consistent with the notion that cultural repertoires incline Mexican immigrants to utilize welfare not primarily to avoid work, cope with disadvantage, or perpetuate a culture of dependency, but rather mostly to minimize employment discontinuities. This result carries important theoretical and policy implications.