Victoria Pinter is an undergraduate senior from Miami, Florida who is pursuing a major in Public Policy and a certificate in Markets and Management. Victoria is very passionate about belonging to the Latinx community and has tried to stay involved during her time at Duke. On campus, she founded her own service club called Duke Dive In, that primarily works with Latinx children in the Durham community and is an active member of the Latinx Business Organization (LBO). Her passion for belonging to the Latinx community is portrayed in her thesis in which she discusses racial equity regarding the uptake rate of social benefits. Victoria hopes to stay connected to her roots as she transitions into the workforce.
Honors Thesis:
Hispanic Families’ Utilization of Social Benefits: A Regional Analysis
Faculty Advisor: Professor Lisa A. Gennetian
Abstract: The connection between race and social benefits is so strong that many times the issue of social benefits is seen as a racial versus a social issue. I hypothesize that Hispanic families in new destination locations which are located in the Southern and Midwestern regions of the United States will receive social benefits at a lower rate when compared to Hispanics that live in established immigrant locations which are located in the Northeastern and Western regions of the US. The lower uptake rate of Hispanics living in Southern and Midwestern regions is due to the particularly racial history of these regions as well as due to the racial and political ideology of those regions. I conducted my logistic regression analysis using data that has been collected by the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE) which is composed of four integrated, nationally representative surveys that were conducted in 2012. The logistic regression analysis of uptake rake by region reveals that being in the South or Midwest lowers a family’s uptake rate of social benefits. This result is significant because it indicates that the hypothesis proposed in this analysis is correct and can allow for future analysis in how to increase equity among Hispanics living in different regions of the United States.