 Changes in health selection of obesity among Mexican immigrants: A binational examinationAnnie Ro and Nancy Fleischer Social Science & Medicine, 2014, vol. 123, issue C, 114-124 Abstract: Health selection is often measured by comparing the health of more recent immigrants to the native born of their new host country. However, this comparison fails to take into account two important factors: (1) that changes in the health profile of sending countries may impact the health of immigrants over time, and (2) that the best comparison group for health selection would be people who remain in the country of origin. Obesity represents an important health outcome that may be best understood by taking into account these two factors. Using nationally-representative datasets from Mexico and the US, we examined differences in obesity-related health selection, by gender, in 2000 and 2012. We calculated prevalence ratios from log-binomial models to compare the risk of obesity among recent immigrants to the US to Mexican nationals with varying likelihood of migration, in order to determine changes in health selection over time. Among men in 2000, we found little difference in obesity status between recent immigrants to the US and Mexican non-migrants. However, in 2012, Mexican men who were the least likely to migrate had higher obesity prevalence than recent immigrants, which may reflect emerging health selection. The trends for women, however, indicated differences in obesity status between recent Mexican immigrants and non-migrants at both time points. In both 2000 and 2012, Mexican national women had significantly higher obesity prevalence than recent immigrant women, with the biggest difference between recent immigrants and Mexican women who were least likely to migrate. There was also indication that selection increased with time for women, as the differences between Mexican nationals and recent immigrants to the US grew from 2000 to 2012. Our study is among the first to use a binational dataset to examine the impact of health selectivity, over time, on obesity. Keywords: Immigration; Obesity; Health selection; Mexico; Binational data (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:123:y:2014:i:c:p:114-124 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.10.047 Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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