When states give driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, it affects nondrivers, too — even the littlest ones. Babies born to immigrants from Mexico and Central America are bigger and healthier in states that make that change, our research shows . The longer a law is in effect before a baby is conceived, the stronger the effect.
We are a sociologist and an epidemiologist who examined the birth records of more than 4 million babies born to Mexican and Central American immigrants who lived in states that adopted expanded driver’s license policies between 2008 and 2021.
We found that incidences of low birth weight – infants weighing less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces at birth – fell 7% in those states, and the average weight of newborns rose by 5.2 grams.
To validate our results, we replicated the analysis for U.S.-born, non-Hispanic white pregnant people living in the same states. We didn’t expect to see any effect from the law for this group — and indeed, we found none.