Tengo hambre porque te quiero: Hispanic parents protect their children despite harsh economic realities

Background:

For public health practitioners, immigration is an important issue because citizenship status and poverty create healthcare disparities. Importantly, these barriers can affect a family’s food security, which has consequences for chronic disease management and prevention. Using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, we sought to examine the poverty levels of Mexican-American citizens and non-citizens, and determine how they prioritize food for their children.

Methodology:

We used the NHANES Demographic and Food Security Questionnaires for the 2009-2010 cycle, with independent sample t-tests to compare means of poverty level indices between populations, and Pearson chi-square tests to compare food security.

 

Results:

Despite Mexican-American non-citizens having a statistically significantly lower family poverty level index compared to Mexican-American citizens (p<0.05), there were no differences between the two groups in multiple measures of child food security. On the other hand, there were significantly more citizen Mexican-American households able to provide food security for adults (p<0.05). Furthermore, in non-citizen Mexican-American households reporting marginal to very low adult food security, greater than 80% reported a higher valence of food security for their children.

 

Conclusion:

Despite significantly different poverty levels between Mexican-American citizen and non-citizens households, these families equally provide a high level of food security for their children. On the other hand, we observe significantly less Mexican-American non-citizen adults than citizen adults with full food security. However, in households with lower adult food security, children almost always received a higher level of food security. Mexican-American non-citizens may be prioritizing their children over themselves when faced with economic challenges.