Table 6 - uploaded by Kelly Bedard
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Immigrant Cohort and Assimilation Effects of Weight for Hispanic Immigrants Compared to Black and Hispanic Natives by Gender (OLS and Probit Results)
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It is well documented that immigrants are in better health upon arrival in the United States than their American counterparts, but that this health advantage erodes over time. We study the potential determinants of this ?healthy immigrant effect?, with a particular focus on the tendency of immigrants to converge to unhealthy American weight levels....
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Context 1
... the distinct native race patterns shown in Figures 1 through 3, the fact that Hispanic female immigrants enter the U.S. heavier than white native women, and the fact that Hispanic immigrants comprise the largest fraction of the U.S. immigrant population, Table 6 replaces the white native control group with a black and then Hispanic native control group for estimating the assimilation pattern for Hispanic women (and for completeness Hispanic men). This allows us to more fully describe to whom Hispanic immigrants are converging. ...
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Citations
... Other relationships are less immediately intuitive. For example, previous research shows that individuals who choose to migrate tend to be healthier than the average population (Jasso et al. 2004;Antecol and Bedard 2006), but our findings show that healthier individuals overall are more likely to aspire to stay. Higher levels of education and employment are not associated with greater desires to stayin fact, they are more often associated with greater migration aspirations, but their influence varies for different population groups. ...
There is growing interest from both policy and academic communities in understanding why people do not migrate. This article offers the first global analysis of the aspiration to stay, defined here as the preference to stay in one's country of residence. We make use of the unique Gallup World Polls which provide information on aspirations to stay (as opposed to migrating abroad) as well as on individual characteristics and opinions for 130 countries worldwide between 2010 and 2016. We find staying aspirations are far more common than migration aspirations across the globe and uncover important “retain factors” often overlooked in research on migration drivers — related to social ties, local amenities, trust in community institutions, and life satisfaction. Overall, those who aspire to stay tend to be more content, socially supported and live in communities with stronger institutions and better local amenities. We further explore differences in the relative importance of retain factors for countries at different levels of urbanization, and for different population groups, based on gender, education, rural/urban location, migration history, religiosity, and perceived thriving. Our findings contribute to a more holistic understanding of migration decision-making, illuminating the personal, social, economic, and institutional retain factors countering those that push and pull.
... Guided by studies in the immigrant health literature (e.g., Antecol & Bedard, 2006;Kennedy et al., 2015), we used the term "immigrant" to denote individuals who self-reported identification as foreign-born and who have immigrated to the U.S. Immigrant density is measured by generating the percentage of foreign-born individuals in each census tract in Florida. The immigrant density scores for census tracts where hospices are located were then extracted and matched with hospices as neighborhood immigrant density score and used in the final analysis. ...
Racial/ethnic minorities are underrepresented in hospice care in the United States, despite this being the standard of care for terminally ill individuals. Research indicates that location of services (e.g., rural vs. urban) plays a role in the differences in quality and quantity of services observed. However, the influences of neighborhood structural characteristics on quality of hospice services have not been explored. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between hospice neighborhood characteristics and caregiver-rated satisfaction with services in Florida. Data were derived from the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Hospice Survey and American Community Survey; ArcGIS was used to generate heat maps to provide visual representations. Findings showed that higher neighborhood immigrant density predicted lower family satisfaction with timely care, communication, spiritual support, and likelihood to recommend the agency services. The U.S. population is projected to continue to grow in its diversity, and thus understanding neighborhood characteristics associated with racial/ethnic minorities’ perception of care quality are important for shaping care improvements.
... Other relationships are less immediately intuitive. For example, previous research shows that individuals who choose to migrate tend to be healthier than the average population (Jasso et al 2004;Antecol and Bedard 2006), yet we find here that individuals who are healthier are generally more likely to aspire to stay. Higher levels of education and employment are not associated with greater desires to stayin fact, they are more often associated with greater migration aspirations, but their influence varies for different population groups. ...
In the last decade, there has been growing interest from both policy and academic communities in understanding why people migrate. The focus, however, remains biased towards understanding mobility, while the structural and personal forces that restrict or resist the drivers of migration, leading to different immobility outcomes, are much less understood. This paper offers the first global analysis of staying preferences, enhancing knowledge about the factors associated with voluntary immobility, defined here as the aspiration to stay in one's country of residence. We make use of the unique Gallup World Polls which provide information on aspirations to stay (as opposed to migrating abroad) as well as on individual characteristics and opinions for 130 countries worldwide between 2010-2016. Staying aspirations are widespread and far more common than migration aspirations, and we uncover important 'retain factors' often overlooked in research on migration drivers-related to social ties, local amenities, trust in community institutions, and life satisfaction. Overall, those who aspire to stay tend to be more content, socially supported and live in communities with stronger institutions and better local amenities. We further explore differences in the relative importance of retain factors for countries at different levels of urbanization, and for different population groups, based on gender, education, rural/urban location, migration history, religiosity, and perceived thriving. Our findings contribute to a more holistic understanding of migration decision-making, illuminating the personal, social, economic, and institutional retain factors countering those that push and pull.
... Indeed, a growing number of studies show that the health advantage that immigrants enjoy on arrival tends to dissipate over time (for SRH, see, e.g., Newbold 2005; Bousmah, Combes, and Abu-Zaineh 2019; Lubbers and Gijsberts 2019; for outcomes related to physical health, see, e.g., Wallace, Khlat, and Guillot 2019;Antecol and Bedard 2006;Khlat and Darmon 2003;Newbold 2005;Giuntella and Mazzonna 2015;Giuntella and Stella 2017;Biddle, Kennedy, and McDonald 2007;Bousmah, Combes, and Abu-Zaineh 2019; for mental health outcomes, see, e.g., Rivera, Casal, and Currais 2016;Alegría et al. 2007;Cook et al. 2009;Aglipay, Colman, and Chen 2013;Vang et al. 2017;Bousmah, Combes, and Abu-Zaineh 2019). This deterioration has been associated with several factors, such as "negative acculturation," meaning a natural convergence toward the average health status of natives (Jasso et al. 2004), unhealthier diets and behaviors after more time in the hosting country (Darmon and Khlat 2001;Fenelon 2013;Antecol and Bedard 2006;Acevedo-Garcia et al. 2005), immigrants' sorting into strenuous occupations Zavodny 2013, 2009;Giuntella and Mazzonna 2015), lack of knowledge of both the health care system and immigrant rights, cultural and linguistic barriers in communicating with health practitioners, and discrimination (Powles and Gifford 1990). ...
... Indeed, a growing number of studies show that the health advantage that immigrants enjoy on arrival tends to dissipate over time (for SRH, see, e.g., Newbold 2005; Bousmah, Combes, and Abu-Zaineh 2019; Lubbers and Gijsberts 2019; for outcomes related to physical health, see, e.g., Wallace, Khlat, and Guillot 2019;Antecol and Bedard 2006;Khlat and Darmon 2003;Newbold 2005;Giuntella and Mazzonna 2015;Giuntella and Stella 2017;Biddle, Kennedy, and McDonald 2007;Bousmah, Combes, and Abu-Zaineh 2019; for mental health outcomes, see, e.g., Rivera, Casal, and Currais 2016;Alegría et al. 2007;Cook et al. 2009;Aglipay, Colman, and Chen 2013;Vang et al. 2017;Bousmah, Combes, and Abu-Zaineh 2019). This deterioration has been associated with several factors, such as "negative acculturation," meaning a natural convergence toward the average health status of natives (Jasso et al. 2004), unhealthier diets and behaviors after more time in the hosting country (Darmon and Khlat 2001;Fenelon 2013;Antecol and Bedard 2006;Acevedo-Garcia et al. 2005), immigrants' sorting into strenuous occupations Zavodny 2013, 2009;Giuntella and Mazzonna 2015), lack of knowledge of both the health care system and immigrant rights, cultural and linguistic barriers in communicating with health practitioners, and discrimination (Powles and Gifford 1990). ...
Background: On arrival, immigrants are on average healthier than Italian natives, but their health advantage tends to dissipate over time. This constitutes a relevant public health issue for the hosting societies, as it implies higher health care costs, lower labor market participation among immigrants, and lower tax revenues. Objective: This study is the first to take a "beyond the mean" perspective in analyzing health differences between Italians and short-say immigrants, as well as between short- and long-stay immigrants. It highlights whether health differences are concentrated in specific parts of the distributions and which observed or unobserved factors contribute to these differences. Methods: We use unconditional quantile regressions combined with Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions on data from the Italian Health Condition Survey. Results: We find that the health advantage of short-stay immigrants over both Italians and long- stay immigrants is concentrated in the lower part of the health distributions. In both cases, this is mainly due to unobserved factors. Observed economic characteristics are actually associated with better health for long-stay immigrants compared to short-stay immigrants. Our results reveal the need of monitoring immigrants' health, particularly of those with poorer initial health conditions. Contribution: We examine immigrant health disparities across the entire health distribution. This helps in shaping effective health policies. Policy interventions should be tailored to immigrants with poor health conditions, for example, by improving their access to the health care system.
... Third, studies find a deterioration of immigrant health with longer residence in the destination country. As the initial immigrant health advantage attenuates, health levels assimilate downwards to those of the native population, and they may decline even below that level (Antecol and Bedard, 2006;Constant et al., 2014;Kennedy et al., 2015;Hall and Cuellar, 2016;Giuntella and Stella, 2017;Constant et al. 2018). Factors that adversely affect immigrants' health over the long-term in the host country include improved socioeconomic status (Bollini and Siem, 1995;Wilkinson and Marmot, 2003;Ronellenfitsch and Razum, 2004), working under poor conditions in risky occupations (Orrenius and Zavodny, 2013), having poor or no access to health care (Derose et al. 2007;Lindert et al., 2008), 2 experiencing discrimination due to xenophobia and "otherness" (Grove and Zwi, 2006;Saadi and Ponce, 2020), and assimilating into unhealthy eating, smoking, and sedentary life-styles (Popovic-Lipovac and Strasser, 2015;Fenelon, 2013). ...
The Healthy Immigrant Paradox found in the literature by comparing the health of immigrants to that of natives in the host country, may suffer from serious cultural biases. Our study evades such biases by utilizing a destination-origin framework, in which we compare the health of emigrants to that of their compatriots who stay in the country of origin. Isolating cultural effects can best gauge self-selection and host country effects on the health of emigrants with longer time abroad. We study both the physical and mental dimensions of health among European-born emigrants over 50, who originate from seven European countries and now live elsewhere in Europe. We use the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and apply multi-level modeling. Regarding the physical health we find positive self-selection, beneficial adaptation effects, and effects from
other observables for some but not all countries. With the notable exception of the German émigrés, we cannot confirm selection in mental health, while additional years abroad have only weak effects. Overall, living abroad has some favorable effects on the health of older emigrants. The economic similarity of countries and the free intra-European mobility mitigate the need for initial self-selection in health and facilitate the migration experience abroad.
... Explanations for the paradoxical mortality findings of Latinos have focused on: 1) health selection at time of migration (Bostean, 2013;Riosmena, Wong, & Palloni, 2013); 2) protective socio-cultural characteristics such as strong social/family ties and positive healthrelated behaviors, particularly lower levels of smoking (Antecol & Bedard, 2006;Fenelon, 2013); and 3) return migration (Palloni & Arias, 2004). However, prior studies show that only a small proportion of the Latino mortality advantage can be explained by the -salmon bias,‖ associated with return migration (Palloni & Arias, 2004;Riosmena et al., 2013). ...
Objectives:
This brief report aims to highlight stark mortality disparities among older Latinos that result from the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
Methods:
We use recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to compute age-specific death rates (ASDRs) for three causes of death: deaths from COVID-19, residual deaths, and total deaths for four age-groups (55-64, 65-74, 75-84, and 85 and older) to assess the impact of COVID-19 on older Latino mortality relative to non-Latino Whites and non-Latino Blacks and also in comparison to residual deaths. Additionally, we obtain ASDRs for all causes of deaths from 1999 to 2018 to provide a pre-pandemic context and assess the extent to which the consistently observed mortality advantage of Latinos persists during the pandemic.
Results:
Consistent with previous research, our findings show that Latinos have lower ASDRs for non-COVID-19 causes of death across all age groups compared to non-Latino Whites. However, our findings indicate that Latinos have significantly higher ASDRs for COVID-19 deaths than non-Latino Whites. Furthermore, although the Latino advantage for total deaths persists during the pandemic, it has diminished significantly compared to the 1999-2018 period.
Discussion:
Our findings indicate that as a result of the pandemic, the time-tested Latino paradox has rapidly diminished due to higher COVID-19 mortality among older Latino adults compared to non-Latino Whites. Future research should continue to monitor the impact of COVID-19 to assess the disparate impact of the pandemic on older Black, Latino and non-Latino White adults as additional data become available.
... Being often relegated to marginalised population groups at the bottom of the society, following a downward assimilation process, expose migrants to risky behaviours related to alcohol and cigarettes consumption, sedentary life and unhealthy dietary styles; in addition, poor working and living conditions, the lack of protective factors such as close family members and religion (lack of ethnic-specific meeting places), and limited access and use of healthcare services due to lack of integration are all conditions that increase the risk of health deterioration over time (Antecol and Bedard 2006;Borrell et al. 2015;Cela and Fokkema 2017;De Luca, Ponzo, and Rodríguez 2013;Giuntella and Stella 2017;Holmboe-Ottesen and Wandel 2012;Kristiansen et al. 2016). ...
Within a framework of increasing ethnic diversity of developed countries' population, a growing body of migration literature has focused on migrants’ health. Nonetheless, although ageing is a major demographic trend of western societies involving both natives and migrants, older migrants remain a relatively under-researched group so far. In Italy, despite the increasing incidence of migration on total population, its fast ageing process, and the acknowledged difficulties that migrants face in becoming full members of the Italian society, thus far, very little is known about the migrant population approaching old age. Our study focuses on the main protective and risk factors of health in later life using a unique dataset from the ‘Social condition and integration of foreign citizens’ (SCIF)’ survey conducted by ISTAT between 2011 and 2012. Our findings show that a number of variables related to both the migration process and living conditions in Italy are important determinants of self-rated health, stressing the necessity to design and implement tailored policy responses and services that address migrants’ vulnerabilities in later life.
... This Healthy Immigrant Effect is due to selection effects, i.e., healthier immigrants are more likely to migrate (Jasso et al., 2004;Wallace and Kulu, 2014;Riosmena et al., 2017). Predominantly, people who have energy and ambition are likely to migrate and are, therefore, in better health compared to the general population (see Antecol and Bedard, 2006;Singh Setia et al., 2011;Kennedy et al., 2015). ...
... Yet it might also be that health conditions deteriorate because of the migration experience, since many studies support a negative association between "length of stay" and health perceptions (Jasso et al., 2004). Mainly US and Canadian longitudinal research support this immigrant health decline hypothesis, with convergence to lower levels of health with enduring length of stay or over generations (McDonald and Kennedy, 2004;Newbold, 2005;Antecol and Bedard, 2006;Acevedo-Garcia et al., 2010;Goldman et al., 2014), although recent panel-studies from Lu et al. (2017) and Jatrana et al. (2018) refute a decline in reported health among (established) immigrants to the US and Australia, respectively, and report stability. A systematic review of studies in Canada states that, "The healthy immigrant effect is stronger for recent . . . . ...
... One reason for this would be that immigrants are not diagnosed yet, since they under-utilize medical care in their new destination country. Both McDonald and Kennedy (2004) and Antecol and Bedard (2006) criticize this explanation, since it implies there is a serious increase in unknown health problems at the time of immigration. The origin countries in this study have advanced health care systems and it may be reasonable to expect that existing health problems would have been diagnosed earlier. ...
Immigrants are often found to rate their health better than the native population does. It is, however, suggested that this healthy immigrant effect declines with an enduring length of stay. With Dutch panel data, we investigate which patterns in self-rated health can be found among immigrants shortly after their migration. We test to what extent economic, social, cultural and emotional explanations affect the changes that immigrants report in self-rated health. Based on a four-wave panel, our results support the immigrants' health decline hypothesis, since the self-rated health decreases in the first years after immigration to the Netherlands. The major change occurs between immigrants rating their health no longer as "very good," but as "good." Shortly after immigration, self-rated health is associated with being employed and a higher income. Hazardous work and physically heavy work decrease self-rated health. Notwithstanding these effects, social, cultural, and emotional explanations turn out to be stronger. A lack of Dutch friends, perceptions of discrimination, perceived cultural distance, and feelings of homesickness strongly affect self-rated health. Furthermore, in understanding changes in self-rated health, the effects of making contact with Dutch people and changes in the perception of discrimination are definitive. However, contact with Dutch people did not decrease and discrimination did not increase over time, making them ineligible as an explanation for overall health decrease. Only the small effect that first-borns have may count as a reason for decreased self-rated health, since many of the recent immigrants we followed started families in the first years after immigration. Our findings leave room for the coined "acculturation to an unhealthier lifestyle thesis," and we see promise in a stronger focus on the role of unmet expectations in the first years after immigration.
... This weakening of the HIE over duration of stay has been observed in a large body of literature and for many different health outcomes, not only in the United States (Antecol and Bedard 2006;Jasso et al. 2004;Stephen et al. 1994) but also in Canada (Deri 2005;Newbold 2006;Ng 2011) and Australia (Biddle, Kennedy, and Mcdonald 2007;Chiswick, Lee, and Miller 2008). In the European context, research finds that migrants have worse self-rated health conditions than natives, but there is also significant cross-national heterogeneity (for a review see Nielsen and Krasnik 2010). ...
Abstract
Background: Cross-national research shows that although immigrants initially have better health than their native-born counterparts, their health deteriorates over time in their destination countries, converging to natives’ health (health convergence). Explanations include acculturation to negative health behaviors, exposure to low socioeconomic status, and social exclusion.
Objective: This study is the first to examine how material deprivation, a measure of relative disadvantage that includes elements of SES and social exclusion, interacts with duration of stay to affect immigrants’ health convergence.
Methods: Using data from Italy (2009), we assess the association between duration of stay and three health outcomes, and we estimate interaction effects of duration of stay with material deprivation.
Results: We find immigrants’ duration of stay is negatively associated with self-rated health, chronic morbidity, and activity limitations. Immigrants’ health converges to natives’, net of controls. Convergence is most dramatic for self-rated health, but the pattern is also reflected in chronic morbidity and activity limitations. The health of immigrants who live in conditions of material deprivation is more similar to natives’ health at shorter durations of stay, compared to their not-deprived counterparts.
Contribution: The paper contributes to a better understanding of the role of social exclusion – measured as material deprivation – on the immigrant–native health convergence process. It is the first to assess the interaction of material conditions and duration of stay in a host country.
... Three explanations have been posited for the immigrant mortality advantage: (1) immigrants are more robust than individuals who do not migrate from their country of origin and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/geronb/gbz038/5429587 by University of Texas at San Antonio user on 08 April 2019 A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 6 individuals in the receiving country, resulting in positive health selection that leads to a mortality advantage (Bostean, 2013;Riosmena et al., 2013); (2) strong social ties and positive health behaviors (i.e. lower levels of smoking/drinking and healthier diet) related to societal norms in their country of origin compared to societal norms in the U.S. may "buffer" against the deleterious effects of socioeconomic disadvantage and contribute to lower mortality among immigrants (Antecol & Bedard, 2006;Markides & Eschbach, 2005); and (3) lastly data quality issues may contribute to an immigrant mortality advantage when immigrants are misclassified or unmatched on death records and when return migration (i.e. the salmon-bias effect) is not captured in vital records (Palloni & Arias, 2004). ...
... For example, immigrants who arrive in adolescence or as children are able to adapt more easily into the host society and may have similar health and mortality experiences as their U.S.-Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/geronb/gbz038/5429587 by University of Texas at San Antonio user on 08 April 2019 A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 7 born co-ethnics (Angel et al., 2010;Garcia & Reyes, 2018;Holmes et al., 2015). While this can provide economic advantages, which may be protective of health in later life (Angel et al., 2001;Gubernskaya, Bean, & Van Hook, 2013), it may also imply the adoption of worse health behaviors including poorer diet, sedentary lifestyle, and increased smoking/drinking (Antecol & Bedard, 2006;Riosmena et al., 2013). In addition, children have little autonomy regarding the migration process; thus gender is unlikely to be a determinant of health selection among early life migrants. ...
... In sum, previous research has found that midlife migrants tend to have better health outcomes than individuals born in the U.S. as well as those arriving in early-or late-life (Garcia & Reyes, 2018;Gubernskaya, 2015). Furthermore, immigrant men from Mexico retain a health advantage longer than immigrant women across several health domains including: self-rated health (Gubernskaya, 2015;Read & Reynolds, 2012), disability (Garcia & Reyes, 2018;Monserud, 2017), obesity (Antecol & Bedard, 2006), and cognition (Hill et al., 2012). Two explanations are posited for the observed gender differences: First, women are less autonomous in the migration process (Carr & Tienda, 2013;Treas, 2015), and thus may be less select on individual health characteristics than men upon initial migration and may also experience faster declines in health since arrival (Eschbach, Al-Snih, Markides, & Goodwin, 2007;Markides & Rote, 2015). ...
Objectives: Using a gendered life course perspective, we examine whether the relationship between age of migration and mortality is moderated by gender among a cohort of older Mexican-Americans.
Methods: Data from the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiological Study of the Elderly and recently matched mortality data are used to estimate Cox proportional hazard models.
Results: Our findings indicate the relationship between age of migration and mortality is moderated by gender suggesting a more nuanced perspective of the immigrant mortality paradox. Among men, midlife migrants exhibit an 18 percent lower risk of mortality compared to their U.S.-born co-ethnics, possibly due to immigrant selectivity at the time of migration. Conversely, late-life migrant women exhibit a 17 percent lower risk of mortality relative to U.S.-born women, attributed in part to socio-cultural characteristics that influence lifestyle risk factors across the life course.
Discussion: Selection mechanisms and acculturation processes associated with the immigrant experience are contingent on both age and gender suggesting the utility of an integrated life course approach to contextualize the mortality profiles of older immigrants. These findings demonstrate the heterogeneity among immigrants and highlight the need to understand gender differences in the migration process when assessing the immigrant mortality paradox.
