Unhealthy Assimilation: Why Do Immigrants Converge to American Health Status Levels?

Heather Antecol () and Kelly Bedard ()
Additional contact information
Heather Antecol: Claremont McKenna College

No 1654, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: 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 BMI levels. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey, we find that the average female and male immigrants enter the U.S. with BMIs that are approximately two and five percentage points lower than native-born women and men, respectively. And, consistent with the declining health status of immigrants the longer they remain in the United States, we also find that female immigrants almost completely converge to American BMIs within ten years of arrival and men close a third of the gap within fifteen years.

Keywords: immigrant; assimilation; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2005-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published - published in: Demography, 2006, 43 (2), 337-360

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp1654.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Unhealthy assimilation: Why do immigrants converge to American health status levels? (2006)
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:iza:izadps:dp1654

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().