A Three-generation Study of Mexican-Americans

Creator:Kyriakos S. Markides
Abstract:N/A
Universe:Mexican Americans between the ages of 65 and 80 who had at least one child and one ever-married grandchild (at least 18 years old) in the same family line
Funding Agency:National Institute on Aging.
Grant Number:5-R01-AG-01573
Purpose:Despite a dramatic increase in attention over the last decade to the special needs of the elderly, there has been little research on minority aged, including Mexican Americans, now the second largest and rapidly growing ethnic group in the United States. A major objective of the study is to describe the place of older Mexican Americans in the extended family, by obtaining information on relations between generations, frequency of contact, amount of intergenerational social support, strength of affectual ties, etc. A second objective of the study is to describe generational changes in various attitudes and behaviors (e.g., occupational achievement, marital relations, sex roles, fertiIity, religious affiliation, health care) taking place among Mexican Americans.
Geographic Coverage:San Antonio, Texas
Geographic Level(s):CITY

Data Collection

Sampling:Multistage area probability sampling was used to identify a group of some 400 Mexican Americans between the ages of 65 and 80 who had at least one child and one ever-married grandchild in the same familiy line (at least 18 years old) living in the metropolitan area. Never-married mambers of the youngest generation were excluded because marital relations are a key aspect of the study. After excluding census tracts with less than 15% Spanish-surname or Spanish-language population in 1970, 45 of the 113 remaining tracts were selected using probabilities proportional to size, with the number of Mexican Americans aged 65 to 80 in each tract being the measure of size. Subsequently, city blocks in the selected tracts were sampled with probabilities inversely proportional to size. Bilingual interviewers attempted to identify all Mexican Americans aged 65-80 in the selected blocks who were members of three-generation families as defined above. Ethnicity was determined by asking respondents whether they considered themselves “Mexican American” or of “Mexican descent or origin”. A brief interview conducted in Spanish or English as required, elicited information about the respondent and about younger family members living in the city, so that they could be contacted for interview. A total of 375 three-generation triads were interviewed, for a total of 1,125 respondents. The sample was disproportionately female (approximately two-thirds) due to greater longevity at the older generation level and due to earlier marriage and childbearing at at all three levels. In addition, the predominance of female lineages is related to the greater propensity of younger women to remain close to the parental household. The median age of the older generation was 74, while it was 49 for the middle and 26 for the younger generation. There was very little overlap in age between adjacent generations. Like Mexican-Americans elsewhere, this population is overrepresented in the lower working classes and underrepresented in the middle and upper-middle classes.
Date of Collection:1981 - 1982
Mode of Data Collection:Face-to-face interviews
Collection Situation:Respondents were interviewed in their homes
Note:Sample representativeness was tested in a parallel, smaller, study that compared older Mexican Americans who were members of three-generation families with other Mexican-American elderly in the San Antonio area on a number of demographic and socio-economic characteristics. Comparisons on several variables of interest to gerontologists revealed no significant differences between elderly members and nonmembers of three-generation families: for example, they are similar in frequency of church attendance, visitation with relatives, self-ratings of health, happiness, and subjective age. These findings, presented at the International Congress of Gerontology, July 14, 1981, in Hamburg, West Germany, suggest that the present study’s generalizability may be extended to the elderly Mexican-American population in the San Antonio area. These findings were also published in “The Journal of Marriage and the Family” (“Sample Representativeness in a Three-generation Study of Mexican Americans”, vol. 45, no. 4, p. 911, November, 1983)

Physical Instance

Location:http://www.markides.org
No. of Cases:1125
Record Count:1125

Collection Information

Version History:Study Proposal: 1979-11-01; Study Funding: 1980-06-01; Defining concepts: 1980-07-01; Designing instrument (questionnaire): 1980-07-25; Questionnaire translation: 1980-09-01; Sampling: 1980-10-15 - 1981-04-01; Data collection: 1981 - 1982; Data production: 1983

Version 7.0 of this document was created by Markides, and was last updated on 1983-12-10T00:00:00-00:00.