Ethnic Attrition, Assimilation, and the Measured Health Outcomes of Mexican Americans

Francisca Antman, Brian Duncan and Stephen Trejo

No 26742, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The literature on immigrant assimilation and intergenerational progress has sometimes reached surprising conclusions, such as the puzzle of immigrant advantage which finds that Hispanic immigrants sometimes have better health than U.S.-born Hispanics. While numerous studies have attempted to explain these patterns, almost all studies rely on subjective measures of ethnic self-identification to identify immigrants’ descendants. This can lead to bias due to “ethnic attrition,” which occurs whenever a U.S.-born descendant of a Hispanic immigrant fails to self-identify as Hispanic. In this paper, we exploit information on parents’ and grandparents’ place of birth to show that Mexican ethnic attrition, operating through intermarriage, is sizable and selective on health, making subsequent generations of Mexican immigrants appear less healthy than they actually are. Consequently, conventional estimates of health disparities between Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic whites as well as those between Mexican Americans and recent Mexican immigrants have been significantly overstated.

JEL-codes: I14 J12 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published as Francisca M. Antman & Brian Duncan & Stephen J. Trejo, 2020. "Ethnic attrition, assimilation, and the measured health outcomes of Mexican Americans," Journal of Population Economics, vol 33(4), pages 1499-1522.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26742.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Ethnic attrition, assimilation, and the measured health outcomes of Mexican Americans (2020)
Working Paper: Ethnic Attrition, Assimilation, and the Measured Health Outcomes of Mexican Americans (2020)
Working Paper: Ethnic Attrition, Assimilation, and the Measured Health Outcomes of Mexican Americans (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26742

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26742

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().