Immigrants' clusters and unequal access to healthcare treatments

Marina Di Giacomo, Giovanni Perucca, Massimiliano Piacenza and Gilberto Turati ()

Regional Science and Urban Economics, 2024, vol. 109, issue C

Abstract: We focus on caesarean sections (C-sections) to examine access to appropriate medical care for immigrants in the Italian tax-funded universal National Health Service. We use a detailed micro-dataset to analyse whether non-native women receive different treatments compared to natives and whether there are differences between groups of non-natives defined by citizenship. For identification, we control for hospital fixed effects and maternal characteristics, and we compare the different groups by exploiting the clustering of non-natives of different nationalities in different urban areas. We find no significant differences between natives and non-natives in terms of C-sections and inappropriate C-sections. However, we do find significant differences between different groups of immigrants. In addition, we find that linguistic and socio-cultural distances are significant drivers of inequalities among non-native women. As language, habits, traditions, and beliefs can affect communication between the woman and the medical staff in many ways, we interpret our findings in terms of the ability to process and understand information between the two parties. In support of this interpretation, we find evidence of a “segregation effect”: women linguistically and socio-culturally more distant from Italy experience the greatest difficulties in accessing appropriate care when living in urban areas characterized by the presence of large immigrant communities of the same nationality. Moreover, we find that the role of linguistic and socio-cultural barriers is stronger for first-time mothers and women with non-native partners.

Keywords: Health inequalities; Immigration; Language differences; Socio-cultural differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H75 I12 I14 I18 O15 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Working Paper: Immigrants' Clusters and Unequal Access to Healthcare Treatments (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:regeco:v:109:y:2024:i:c:s0166046224000942

DOI: 10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2024.104063

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