Publications by authors named "Erin R Hamilton"

Macro-level events such as elections can improve or harm population health across existing axes of stratification through policy changes and signals of inclusion or threat. This study investigates whether rates of, and disparities in, adverse birth outcomes between racialized and nativity groups changed after Donald Trump's November 2016 election, a period characterized by increases in xenophobic and racist messages, policies, and actions in the United States. Using data from 15,568,710 U.

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Children comprise a significant share of immigrants around the world, yet scholarship has largely treated children as adult-like or adult-following actors in migration. We explore how the early life course and parents' migration structured children's migration from Mexico to the United States from 2002 to 2005, using the Mexican Family Life Survey, national survey data from Mexico that tracked 854 migrants, including 375 children, to the United States. We find that while parents' migration decisions matter at all ages, young children who migrate are nearly always accompanied by their parents, whereas the minority of adolescents are.

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The 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program granted work authorization and protection from deportation to more than 800,000 young undocumented immigrants who arrived to the United States as minors. We estimate the association between this expansion of legal rights and birth outcomes among 72,613 singleton births to high school-educated Mexican immigrant women in the United States from June 2010 to May 2014, using birth records data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Exploiting the arbitrariness of the upper age cutoff for DACA eligibility and using a difference-in-differences design, we find that DACA was associated with improvements in the rates of low birth weight and very low birth weight, birth weight in grams, and gestational age among Mexican immigrant mothers.

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In the past 10 years, a historical change occurred in migration flows within North America: specifically, Mexico-U.S. migration reached zero net migration.

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Historically, undocumented Mexican farm workers migrated circularly, leaving family behind in Mexico on short trips to the United States. Scholars have argued that border militarization has disrupted circular migration as the costs of crossing the border lead to longer stays, increased settlement, and changing transnational family practices. Yet, no study has explored changes in the transnational family structures of Mexico-U.

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We examine the nature and degree of two sources of error in data on migration from Mexico to the United States in Mexican household-based surveys: (1) sampling error that results when whole households migrate and no one is left behind to report their migration; and (2) reporting errors that result when migrants are not identified by survey respondents. Using data from the first two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey, which tracked Mexican migrants to the United States from 2002 to 2005, we find that one-half of migrants from Mexico to the United States are not counted as a result of these two sources of error. Misreporting is the larger source of error, accounting for more than one-third of all migrants.

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Research on the relationship between migration and infant health in Mexico finds that migration has mixed impacts on the risk of low birthweight (LBW). Whereas the departure and absence of household and community members are harmful, remittances are beneficial. We extend this work by considering a different measure of infant health in addition to LBW: macrosomia (i.

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In this study we examine the social and economic factors driving internal migration flows in Mexico. We pay particular attention to the effect that economic liberalization has had in encouraging migration to border cities. Our analysis of the origin and destination of migrants is carried out at a finer level of geographical detail than ever before.

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Mexican American children have a weight distribution that categorizes them as relatively healthy at birth but relatively unhealthy by age 3. This early life course transition in health based on weight raises the question of whether Mexican American children "outgrow" the epidemiologic paradox of favorable birth outcomes despite social disadvantage or whether their birthweight distribution places them on trajectory for overweight in childhood. We address this question using newly available 9-year follow-up data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing birth cohort study linked to pre-natal medical records.

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Although research has documented factors associated with maternal smoking, we need a more in-depth understanding of the risk factors associated with changes in smoking behaviors during the postpartum period. We investigate smoking patterns during pregnancy and 1 year postpartum as a function of relevant psychosocial factors. We use data on 3,522 postpartum mothers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to analyze the predictors of smoking among mothers who did not smoke during pregnancy but smoked at 1 year postpartum, mothers who smoked both during pregnancy and postpartum, and mothers who did not smoke during either period.

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Robert Hummer and Erin Hamilton note that the prevalence of fragile families varies substantially by race and ethnicity. African Americans and Hispanics have the highest prevalence; Asian Americans, the lowest; and whites fall somewhere in the middle. The share of unmarried births is lower among most foreign-born mothers than among their U.

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OBJECTIVE: This study investigates how prenatal demographic, social, and behavioral characteristics of Mexican origin immigrant mothers, which are linked to their relatively healthy birth outcomes, influence the subsequent health of their children in comparison to other racial and ethnic groups. METHODS: We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study of a cohort of 2,819 children born between 1998 and 2000 to analyze chronic health conditions at age 5 using logistic regression models. RESULTS: Multivariate analyses revealed no significant differences in chronic health conditions at age 5 between children of Mexican immigrant mothers and non-Hispanic white children, controlling for socioeconomic status and access to health care.

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This study explores rural and urban differences in the relationship between U.S. migration experience measured at the individual, household, and community levels and individual-level infant mortality outcomes in a national sample of recent births in Mexico.

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We employed multilevel models to estimate the effects of neighborhood racial composition on birthweight, using a national urban sample of 1871 births to unmarried black mothers from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing birth cohort study. The mothers lived in 1181 census tracts with substantial variability in racial composition and poverty. Controlling for individual characteristics, census tract poverty, and city characteristics, the proportion black in the mother's census tract had no linear association with infant birthweight.

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Objectives: We examined racial and ethnic disparities in low birthweight (LBW) among unmarried mothers and the extent to which demographic, economic, psychosocial, health, health care, and behavioral factors explain those disparities.

Methods: Using a sample of 2,412 non-marital births from a national urban birth cohort study, we estimated multiple logistic regression models to examine disparities in LBW between non-Hispanic white (NHW), non-Hispanic black (NHB), U.S.

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