New Report FRom the Pew Hispanic Center

Gender and Migration

by Richard Fry

Report Materials

Complete Report

Fact Sheets and Other Resources

Reflecting broad changes in their social and economic status, women around the world have been migrating more in recent decades and have thus constituted an increasing share of migrant populations almost everywhere. But the U.S. has defied this global trend, according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of data from the U.S, Census Bureau and the United Nations. Women have made up ever larger shares of legal immigrants to the United States in recent years, as they have elsewhere. However, an increasing flow of mostly-male unauthorized migrants has more than counterbalanced the feminization of legal migration, making the U.S. the only industrialized country where the percentage of female migrants has declined over the past 25 years.