The proposed research will study intra-generational and inter-generation changes and persistence in socioeconomic mobility; ethnic identity and behavior; and gender and family attitudes and behaviors among Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio. By interviewing respondents to a 1965-66 survey of Mexican Americans and interviewing their children, the investigators will produce a 30-year longitudinal and inter-generational data set. The 1965-66 survey was based on a random sample of Mexican Americans living in the two metropolitan areas with the largest Mexican American population, Los Angeles and San Antonio. The investigators have already located over half of the Los Angeles sample and begin interviewing them in Fall 1996. The results of a pilot study indicate that they can successfully locate at least 90 percent of the original respondents and their families. The longitudinal and inter-generational study of Mexican Americans will provide a unique opportunity for studying the effects of class, ethnicity, and context on socioeconomic mobility, change in ethnic identity, and change in family and gender attitudes in an ethnic urban population. First, the investigators test the hypothesis that ethnic identity will persist into the third generation, in symbolic and behavioral ways and that ethnic markers -- such as surname, phenotype, linguistic ability; socioeconomic origins and mobility; and the social context during childhood with respect to its class and ethnic composition will influence symbolic and behavioral expressions of ethnicity. Secondly they expect that the socioeconomic position of respondents at the time of the first interview will be an important but insufficient explanation of the respondents' and their children's mobility and that factors indicating their racial position, such as phenotype, racial/ethnic/phenotype status of parents and racial/ethnic context when respondents were children will be important. Thirdly, they evaluate whether gender role attitudes have liberalized for all ages and especially so for women; whether there is a significant generation gap between parents and children because of the presence of a large immigrant generation; whether gender role attitudes will be affected by the ethnic and economic context in which the child respondents are raised; and whether parents transmit their values to their children. This study will shed light on the long-term progress of Mexican Americans, the progeny of the largest and longest lasting immigration to the U.S.
