The Acceleration of Immigrant Unhealthy Assimilation

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 9664 January 2016 ABSTRACTThe Acceleration of Immigrant Unhealthy Assimilation * It is well-known that immigrants tend to be healthier than US natives and that this advantage erodes with time spent in the US. However, we know less about the heterogeneity of these trajectories among arrival cohorts. Recent studies have shown that later arrival cohorts of immigrants have lower entry wages and experience less economic assimilation. In this paper, we investigate whether similar cohort effects can be observed in the weight assimilation of immigrants in the US. Focusing on obesity, we show that more recent immigrant cohorts arrive with higher obesity rates and experience a faster "unhealthy assimilation" in terms of weight gain.JEL Classification: J15, I10

Health Care and Migration: What Data Can Tell Us of the Hard-to-Measure Impact of Migrants on the European Health Systems

“…Migrants from low-income countries have been described as "travellers of time" from the past and therefore have been exposed to fewer health risks, particularly for non-communicable diseases (Razum and Twardella 2002). However, it has recently been shown that being a migrant can be a decisive factor that negatively determines their health (Rechel et al 2011), from arrival to stay in the destination countries (Marmot 2005;Marmot et al 2012;Davies et al 2009;Malmusi 2014;Giuntella and Stella 2017). Concurrent mechanisms such as poverty, discrimination in the labor market, travel, and living conditions in the host countries can influence migrants' opportunities in terms of healthcare received and suffered diseases, affecting the deterioration of their health over time (Acevedo-Garcia et al 2010;Rechel et al 2013).…”

“…Concurrent mechanisms such as poverty, discrimination in the labor market, travel, and living conditions in the host countries can influence migrants' opportunities in terms of healthcare received and suffered diseases, affecting the deterioration of their health over time (Acevedo-Garcia et al 2010;Rechel et al 2013). This is also known as the exhausted migrant effect, which also affects the health of second-generation migrants (Devillanova and Frattini 2016): a natural regression process towards the average health of the population (Giuntella 2013), an unhealthy assimilation process (Antecol and Bedard 2006;Giuntella and Stella 2017), and more likely to do dangerous work (Orrenius and Zavodny 2013;Giuntella and Mazzonna 2015). Additionally, adversities may be the cause of an increased incidence of mental disorders such as schizophrenia (Ingleby et al 2012), anxiety, and depression (Lindert et al 2009) among migrants.…”

Targeting the spatial context of obesity determinants via multiscale geographically weighted regression

“…Age has been shown to be a key determinant of obesity, with middle-aged adults having a far greater likelihood of being obese compared to older-aged and younger-aged adult groups [2,64,65]. Race and ethnicity are frequently regarded as reliable predictors of obesity where minority populations are considered to be especially vulnerable to higher rates of obesity [8,49,66,67]. The percentage of households receiving SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps) was included because there is vigorous debate as to whether the program increases or decreases obesity rates in low-income communities [49,[68][69][70][71].…”

Targeting the spatial context of obesity determinants via multiscale geographically weighted regression

“…Age has been shown to be a key determinant of obesity, with middle-aged adults having a far greater likelihood of being obese compared to older-aged and younger-aged adult groups (Ogden et al 2010;NCHS 2017;Hales et al, 2018). Race and ethnicity are frequently regarded as reliable predictors of obesity where minority populations are considered to be especially vulnerable to higher rates of obesity (Cockerham et al, 2017;Giuntella & Stella, 2017;Segal et al, 2017;Sohn et al, 2017). The percentage of households receiving SNAP benefits (formerly known as food stamps) was included because there is vigorous debate as to whether the program increases or decreases obesity rates in low-income communities (Meyerhoefer & Pylypchuk, 2008;DeBono, Ross, & Berrang-Ford, 2012;Gundersen, 2016;Segal et al, 2017;Burke et al, 2019).…”