Household Incarceration and Salient Emerging Adult Role Transitions: Findings From an Urban Sample of Hispanic Youth

Abstract

In California, Hispanic children are 2.5 times as likely to have a family member in prison than their non-Hispanic White peers. Despite these ethnic disparities, few studies have examined the longitudinal impact of household incarceration on age-salient developmental transitions among Hispanic emerging adults. Using a matching method to control for demographic and psychosocial factors, we investigated whether emerging adults who were raised in families with an incarcerated adult experienced labor force participation, family formation, education, and criminal justice involvement differently than their peers without a history of family incarceration. Participants who had a history of household incarceration and who interacted with the criminal justice system themselves had significantly different transition experiences than their peers (higher odds of past year job loss, cohabitation, and having a child by age 20, and lower odds of pursuing a postsecondary education) and may be at increased risk of systematic disadvantage over the life course.