Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Hispanics are the largest and fastest growing racial/ethnic minority group in the U.S., yet the family structure and family functioning of Hispanic families remains relatively understudied compared to white and black families, partly due to there being insufficient data that can address questions about Hispanic family life. The Hispanic population is incredibly diverse, with notable differences in family needs, experiences, and outcomes by subgroup (e.g., nativity, U.S. citizenship status, languages spoken). The ability of family-focused programs and policies to respond to the needs of different subpopulations relies on the availability of adequate data that can inform program and policy development. This paper aims to assess the state of our current national data infrastructure to measure, describe, and better understand the structure, diversity, complexity, and dynamics of Hispanic family life. Our review will not only serve as a resource for researchers interested in studying Hispanic family life, but will inform future data collection efforts for survey research.

Our review included 22, mostly national surveys. To be included in the review, surveys had to: have data available for the past 10 years; be nationally representative, with a few exceptions for rigorously designed surveys with large Hispanic samples (e.g., Supporting Healthy Marriage); include at least one of the domains of family life of interest, namely, family/household composition, family formation and stability, relationship dynamics, parenting and co-parenting; have a large Hispanic sample; and have publicly available data and codebooks. In addition to screening surveys for their inclusion of information about family life (totaling 47 dimensions across the four domains mentioned above), we searched for the availability of the 10 key data elements[1] that have been identified as essential to our understanding of diversity among Hispanics.

Our review revealed that the capacity of our nation’s current data infrastructure to describe and understand the characteristics and experiences of Latino families and households is mixed. On the one hand, surveys are collecting information needed to count and describe the types of families and households Hispanic children and adults are living in. Additionally, several surveys provide at least some information to understand how Hispanic families are formed and how stable they are. Our data infrastructure is less well equipped to speak to what happens when we peak under the hood of Latino family life. Many surveys capture some information about parenting, but few collect information on couples’ relationships or co-parenting, limiting our ability to understand family processes among Latinos. Not a single survey allows us to get a complete picture of Hispanic diversity and family life. Limitations in the availability of information on Hispanic diversity, coupled with the insufficient information about family life, hinder our ability to describe Hispanic families and the diversity in their experiences adequately. In the absence of this information, the ability to develop programs and policies tailored to the needs of specific subpopulations is highly compromised. We will discuss recommendations for future surveys so that they can adequately capture the diversity of Hispanic family life and inform more tailored program and policy development.