Life Expectancy Among U.S.-born and Foreign-born Older Adults in the United States: Estimates From Linked Social Security and Medicare Data

Abstract

In recent decades, the geographic origins of America’s foreign-born population have become increasingly diverse. The sending countries of the U.S. foreign-born vary substantially in levels of health and economic development, and immigrants have arrived with distinct distributions of socioeconomic status, visa type, year of immigration, and age at immigration. We use high-quality linked Social Security and Medicare records to estimate life tables for the older U.S. population over the full range of birth regions. In 2000–2009, the foreign-born had a 2.4-year advantage in life expectancy at age 65 relative to the U.S.-born, with Asian-born subgroups displaying exceptionally high longevity. Foreign-born individuals who migrated more recently had lower mortality compared with those who migrated earlier. Nonetheless, we also find remarkable similarities in life expectancy among many foreign-born subgroups that were born in very different geographic and socioeconomic contexts (e.g., Central America, western/eastern Europe, and Africa).

Work Disability Among Native-born and Foreign-born Americans: On Origins, Health, and Social Safety Nets

“…Persons from Eastern Asia and South Central Asia have the lowest adjusted incidence of disability benefit award. These results are consistent with the literature about the Hispanic advantage, summarized by Markides and Rote (2015), and with the recent finding by Mehta et al (2016) of particularly low old-age mortality for persons from Eastern Asia.…”

“…Recent research has reported differences among the foreign-born from different geographic origins in life expectancy at age 65 (Mehta et al 2016) and in several physical and mental health outcomes (Cho and Hummer 2001; Hamilton and Hummer 2011; Huang et al 2011). Foreign-born adults of different origins differ in several domains that affect health and employment profiles—namely, educational attainment, English proficiency, immigration status, and time of entry into the United States—as well as in the physical and social circumstances they experienced in their sending countries (Feliciano 2005; Frisbie et al 2001; U.S.…”

International Perspective on Health Literacy and Health Equity: Factors That Influence the Former Soviet Union Immigrants

“…Importantly, the Soviet healthcare system was the same across all Soviet republics and very different from the Western healthcare delivery model [14,17]. In general, FSU immigrants are white [22] and well-educated [23,24] highly skilled workers [25]. The majority migrate with educational attainment higher than the native-born populations of the USA [26], Germany [27], and Israel [28].…”

Ethnicity and “aggressive” end-of-life care

“…Similar survival advantages have been described in other ethnic populations in North America and Canada. 7,8 Therefore, a more plausible interpretation of the differences reported by Yarnell and colleagues may be that the general popu lation in Ontario is less likely to receive "appropriate care" than people of Chinese or South Asian descent. A related limitation to Yarnell and colleagues' research is the lack of any accompanying qualitative inquiry, which constitutes a missed opportunity to explore perspectives on care preferences, judgments on the appropriateness of care or whether patients and their loved ones felt respected in their final days.…”