The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Latinx College Graduates

This project investigates the social and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on first-generation Latinx college graduates aged 25 to 40. Latinx youth are increasingly enrolling in and graduating from college, often with the hope of achieving economic mobility. Yet, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Latinx individuals were more likely to work essential jobs, were unemployed at higher rates, and faced higher death rates, compared to other racial and ethnic groups. This qualitative project considers how Latinx millennial college graduates navigate and are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including their well-being, economic mobility, and family arrangements. Interviews with 61 Latinx college graduates consider how factors such as race, familial income and wealth, citizenship and immigration status, and the need to provide for one's family, intersect and are shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic. By building on two prior waves of interview data, the project contributes to understanding of the mechanisms that shape social and economic mobility over the life course. This project is the third wave of a longitudinal study of Latinx millennial first-generation college graduates. The first wave was collected from 60 Latinx college students at three colleges between 2008 and 2010. The second wave of 61 interviews, conducted in 2018 and 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic, included participants from the first wave alongside a new sample of alumni. Approximately 73% of participants in the second wave were from the original sample. The study population is diverse, ranging in income, post-secondary education, student loan debt, homeownership, and marital and parental status. Over half of the study population provide some level of financial support to parents and extended family. Wave 3 of the study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the same college graduates. This research will contribute to understanding of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.