India-born mothers count for the third largest, and have the maximum annual median family income
Immigrant parents are the main strength behind new births in the US, data from the Pew Research Center reveals.
Since 1970 the annual number of births to immigrant mothers has tripled in the US. In comparison, US-born mothers have seen a decline of more than 10 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. In 2014 about four million children were born in the US, of which nearly 900,000 were born to foreign-born mothers. This means 22 percent of the newborns were born to immigrant mothers. In other words, nearly one in four babies born in the US has immigrant parents.
Interestingly, more than 50 percent of these newborn babies trace lineage to just nine countries. Among these, India ranks 3rd with 43,364 babies born to India-born mothers. The nine countries as per the percentage of the foreign-born new mothers from that country to the total number of foreign-born new mothers in the US are Mexico (56.38 %), China (8.80%), India (8.51 %), El Salvador (6.19%), Guatemala (4.89%), Philippines (4.85%), Honduras (3.67%), Vietnam (3.48%) and Dominican Republic (3.14%). We have excluded Puerto Rico from this calculation as it is a US territory.
If we look at the financial strength of the new foreign-born mothers, India fares much better than all others. Only four percent of the India-born mothers live in poverty. According to Pew Research Center, the annual median family income of India-born mothers in the US is $104,500. In comparison, the annual median family income of China-born mothers is $67000; and that from Mexico is $27,500.
With regard to family income, India-born mothers did far better than the US-born mothers, too.
US-born mothers’ annual median family income was recorded as $51,200. About 26 percent of these mothers live in poverty, compared to India’s just four percent.
(This story has been updated on March 8, 2017)