Latino Children’s Behavioral Problems in Extended Family Households among Immigrant Families in L.A.

Jeehye Kang, University of Maryland

Using the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey, this paper addresses the relationship between family extension and children’s behavioral outcomes. Focusing on Latino children in immigrant families, it highlights rather ignored aspect of family contexts: extended family contexts. I examine the impact of family extension—vertical and horizontal—on children’s internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems, net of crowding housing condition. Only horizontally extended households have deleterious association with internalizing behavioral problem in the OLS results. In contrast, counterfactual analysis using propensity score matching estimate gives mixed support for this suggestion, that the effects of horizontally extended family on children’s internalizing behavioral problem may or may not be statistically significant, depending on the matching algorithm. Thus, extended family contexts indicate disadvantages rather than additional supports as the horizontal extension show stronger associations than do vertical extension. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the source of disadvantages most came from the low housing conditions.