The Healthy Immigrant Effect and Immigrant Selection: Evidence from Four Countries

Steven Kennedy, James McDonald () and Nicholas Biddle ()

Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers from McMaster University

Abstract: The existence of a healthy immigrant effect – where immigrants are on average healthier than the native-born – is now a well accepted phenomenon. There are many competing explanations for this phenomenon including health screening by recipient countries, healthy behaviour prior to migration followed by the steady adoption of new country (less) healthy behaviours, and immigrant self-selection where healthier and wealthier people tend to be migrants. We explore the last two of these explanations for the healthy immigrant effect by examining the health outcomes, health behaviours, and socio-economic characteristics of immigrants from a range of source countries in the US, Canada, UK and Australia. We find evidence of strong positive selection effects for immigrants from all regions of origin in terms of education. However, we also find evidence that self-selection in terms of unobservable factors is an important determinant of the better health of recent immigrants.

Keywords: immigrant health; selection effects; smoking; obesity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I00 I12 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54 pages
Date: 2006-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

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