Description of Data
Health and Migration Survey (HMS) developed as part of a binational longitudinal data collection and analysis project that examines the health consequences of Mexico-U.S. migration. Our communities in Mexico represent various types of climatic conditions, population compositions, and economic productions. By 2002, data come from representative samples of households in eleven communities in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. In each community, we conducted interviews with a random sample of 200 households, or in smaller communities, we interviewed the entire population of households.The key respondent to the HMS was the Asenora of the household, who was either the wife of a male household head or in a few households, the head. The HMS asks women respondents about their marriage, work and fertility histories as well as household migration, labor and asset acquisitions. It also contains data on adult and child health, including histories about live births that occurred in the six years prior to the survey date, infant mortality, immunizations, breastfeeding, health service utilization and beliefs, and prenatal health.
To complement the data from Mexico, we also collected data from two neighborhoods that were primary U.S. migrant destinations for our respondents from the Mexican communities. In each city, we began by defining neighborhoods (using census tract and block information) that contained high concentrations of foreign born persons and those of Mexican national origin. Because census data were relatively dated by the time of our surveys, we then spent several days walking through the neighborhoods defining and redefining their boundaries. This process was especially important in Houston, a city without zoning laws. As a result, we defined our neighborhoods to exclude 1-2 block groups, where relatively large commercial establishments were situated (typically on the edges of our neighborhood area). Once the definitions and boundaries for each neighborhood were established, we obtained a list of all household addresses in the neighborhood and randomly chose our sample households from this list.
A strength of the U.S. sample is that the two neighborhoods are very different from each other. The San Diego neighborhood contains a relatively young population, with many young children, few home owners, and many recently arrived Mexican migrants. The Houston neighborhood is more established, older, with fewer recent Mexican arrivals, but more home owners and more two-parent households. To the extent that other immigrant destinations areas share the same characteristics, we argue that our sample data are representative of these areas.
