Housing Preferences of Asian and Hispanic/Latino Immigrants in the United States: A Melting Pot or Salad Bowl

Several factors affecting household formations of first- and second-generation Asian and Hispanic/Latino immigrants are identified, including contextual social interaction effects. Using household data from the American Housing Survey and Public Use Micro-data Sample, we find that first-generation Asian and Hispanic/Latino immigrants are more likely to live in coresidence households; and this is influenced by immigrant gender, age, education, income, employment and density. Education and income are inversely related to coresiding, while higher immigrant density increases the propensity to coreside. Contextual effects reveal that neighborhoods with a relatively large Caucasian average household size increase coresidence behavior among immigrants; and the income of Caucasians living in the area is inversely related to immigrant coresiding behavior. Second-generation Asian immigrants are more likely to live independently, while second-generation Hispanic/Latino immigrants have a higher propensity to coreside; however, they are influenced contextually by geographic household and income patterns. We further specify findings by considering local housing price, the fusion of immigrants in the United States, agglomeration of immigrants in central city and a comparison between immigrants in United States and similarly aged natives in China. Our results are robust to potential sample-selection bias and social interaction boundary selection bias.