IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/joimai/v19y2018i2d10.1007_s12134-018-0546-4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Age and Gender Variations in Healthy Immigrant Effect: a Population Study of Immigrant Well-Being in Canada

Author

Listed:
  • Kyunghwa Kwak

    (University of East London)

Abstract

The healthy immigrant effect (HIE) is the phenomenon in which immigrants show better health than their native-born counterparts but this healthier condition declines with length of residence. This study investigated whether (1) immigrants also show better adaptation than non-immigrants as well as better health, (2) length of residence affects their health and adaptation differently, and (3) differential outcomes are found for different age and gender groups. Utilizing the Canadian Community Health Survey (2011–2012) data, immigrants (N = 17,555) and non-immigrants (N = 103,579) were divided into adolescents (15–19 years old), adults (20–49), older adults (50–64), and seniors (65–74) to examine their subjective general and mental health, diagnosed chronic and psychological illnesses, and self-reported daily stress, life satisfaction and sense of belonging. After controlling for key demographics, HIE was found to be more robust in health than adaptation. In general, recent immigrants reported better health conditions than long-term immigrants; however, the two did not differ with daily stress or life satisfaction. The older adult immigrants were the only segment of the immigrant population who did not display HIE; within the immigrant population, working-aged long-term adult immigrants were those experiencing negative well-being in both health and adaptation compared to the same-aged recent immigrants. Regarding diagnosed psychological illnesses, immigrants yielded no difference by age, gender, or length of residence, indicating ‘reluctant’ views on seeking professional help for mental health were persistently held by both recent and long-immigrants. The findings suggest that health policy needs to take into consideration age-related life stages, and enhancement of mental health awareness for immigrant well-being.

Suggested Citation

  • Kyunghwa Kwak, 2018. "Age and Gender Variations in Healthy Immigrant Effect: a Population Study of Immigrant Well-Being in Canada," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 413-437, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joimai:v:19:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s12134-018-0546-4
    DOI: 10.1007/s12134-018-0546-4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12134-018-0546-4
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s12134-018-0546-4?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kwak, Kyunghwa, 2016. "An evaluation of the healthy immigrant effect with adolescents in Canada: Examinations of gender and length of residence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 87-95.
    2. Mai Stafford & Bruce K. Newbold & Nancy A. Ross, 2011. "Psychological Distress Among Immigrants and Visible Minorities in Canada: a Contextual Analysis," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 57(4), pages 428-441, July.
    3. Allen, M.L. & Elliott, M.N. & Morales, L.S. & Diamant, A.L. & Hambarsoomian, K. & Schuster, M.A., 2007. "Adolescent participation in preventive health behaviors, physical activity, and nutrition: Differences across immigrant generations for Asians and Latinos compared with whites," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 97(2), pages 337-343.
    4. Arber, Sara & Cooper, Helen, 1999. "Gender differences in health in later life: the new paradox?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 61-76, January.
    5. Dale Dannefer, 2003. "Cumulative Advantage/Disadvantage and the Life Course: Cross-Fertilizing Age and Social Science Theory," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 58(6), pages 327-337.
    6. Wu, Z. & Schimmele, C.M., 2005. "Racial/ethnic variation in functional and self-reported health," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 95(4), pages 710-716.
    7. Wolff, Lisa S. & Subramanian, S.V. & Acevedo-Garcia, Dolores & Weber, Deanne & Kawachi, Ichiro, 2010. "Compared to whom? Subjective social status, self-rated health, and referent group sensitivity in a diverse US sample," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(12), pages 2019-2028, June.
    8. Gordon-Larsen, Penny & Harris, Kathleen Mullan & Ward, Dianne S. & Popkin, Barry M., 2003. "Acculturation and overweight-related behaviors among Hispanic immigrants to the US: the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 57(11), pages 2023-2034, December.
    9. Kaplan, Mark S. & Huguet, Nathalie & Feeny, David H. & McFarland, Bentson H., 2010. "Self-reported hypertension prevalence and income among older adults in Canada and the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(6), pages 844-849, March.
    10. Veenstra, Gerry, 2009. "Racialized identity and health in Canada: Results from a nationally representative survey," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(4), pages 538-542, August.
    11. Mireille Laroche, 2000. "Health Status and Health Services Utilization of Canada's Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Populations," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 26(1), pages 51-75, March.
    12. Kim, I.-H. & Carrasco, C. & Muntaner, C. & McKenzie, K. & Noh, S., 2013. "Ethnicity and postmigration health trajectory in new immigrants to Canada," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 103(4), pages 96-104.
    13. Karen M. Kobayashi & Steven Prus, 2007. "Explaining the Health Gap Between Canadian- and Foreign-Born Older Adults: Findings from the 2000/2001 Canadian Community Health Survey," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 211, McMaster University.
    14. Jersey Liang & Joan M. Bennett & Benjamin A. Shaw & Ana R. Quiñones & Wen Ye & Xiao Xu & Mary Beth Ofstedal, 2008. "Gender Differences in Functional Status in Middle and Older Age: Are There Any Age Variations?," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 63(5), pages 282-292.
    15. Lasser, K.E. & Himmelstein, D.U. & Woolhandler, S., 2006. "Access to care, health status, and health disparities in the United States and Canada: Results of a Cross-National Population Based Survey," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 96(7), pages 1300-1307.
    16. Lawrence So & Hude Quan, 2012. "Coming to Canada: the difference in health trajectories between immigrants and native-born residents," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 57(6), pages 893-904, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yu-Jung Lin & Jeng-Yuan Chiou & Jing-Yang Huang & Pen-Hua Su & Jia-Yuh Chen & Hao-Jan Yang, 2021. "A Comparative Prevalence of Birth Defects between Newborns of Immigrant and Native-Born Mothers in Taiwan: Ten Years of Population-Based Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(23), pages 1-12, November.
    2. Chang Su & Lixia Yang & Linying Dong & Weiguo Zhang, 2022. "The Psychological Well-Being of Older Chinese Immigrants in Canada amidst COVID-19: The Role of Loneliness, Social Support, and Acculturation," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(14), pages 1-12, July.
    3. Mabel Ho & Eleanor Pullenayegum & David Burnes & Esme Fuller-Thomson, 2022. "Successful Aging among Immigrant and Canadian-Born Older Adults: Findings from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA)," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-18, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Morton Beiser & Feng Hou, 2014. "Chronic health conditions, labour market participation and resource consumption among immigrant and native-born residents of Canada," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 59(3), pages 541-547, June.
    2. Steven Kennedy & Michael P. Kidd & James Ted McDonald & Nicholas Biddle, 2015. "The Healthy Immigrant Effect: Patterns and Evidence from Four Countries," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 317-332, May.
    3. Ang, Shannon, 2019. "Intersectional cohort change: Disparities in mobility limitations among older Singaporeans," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 228(C), pages 223-231.
    4. Jatrana, Santosh & Pasupuleti, Samba Siva Rao & Richardson, Ken, 2014. "Nativity, duration of residence and chronic health conditions in Australia: Do trends converge towards the native-born population?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 53-63.
    5. Matthias Pannhorst & Florian Dost, 2022. "A Life-Course View on Ageing Consumers: Old-Age Trajectories and Gender Differences," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(2), pages 1157-1180, April.
    6. Prus, Steven G., 2011. "Comparing social determinants of self-rated health across the United States and Canada," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 50-59, July.
    7. Brewer, Mackenzie & Kimbro, Rachel Tolbert, 2014. "Neighborhood context and immigrant children's physical activity," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 1-9.
    8. Siddiqi, Arjumand & Zuberi, Daniyal & Nguyen, Quynh C., 2009. "The role of health insurance in explaining immigrant versus non-immigrant disparities in access to health care: Comparing the United States to Canada," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 1452-1459, November.
    9. Antonio Fidalgo & Alberto Holly & Marco Pecoraro & Philippe Wanner, 2016. "A nonparametric analysis of the healthy immigrant effect," IRENE Working Papers 16-15, IRENE Institute of Economic Research.
    10. Ramraj, Chantel & Shahidi, Faraz Vahid & Darity, William & Kawachi, Ichiro & Zuberi, Daniyal & Siddiqi, Arjumand, 2016. "Equally inequitable? A cross-national comparative study of racial health inequalities in the United States and Canada," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 19-26.
    11. Mara Sheftel & Frank W. Heiland, 2018. "Disability crossover: Is there a Hispanic immigrant health advantage that reverses from working to old age?," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 39(7), pages 209-250.
    12. Heather Antecol & Kelly Bedard, 2006. "Unhealthy assimilation: Why do immigrants converge to American health status levels?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 43(2), pages 337-360, May.
    13. Rennie Lee & Laxman Bablani, 2023. "Do Asian Immigrants Have Better Mental Health? An Examination of Arrival Cohort and Gender in Australia," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 42(3), pages 1-29, June.
    14. Warner, David F. & Brown, Tyson H., 2011. "Understanding how race/ethnicity and gender define age-trajectories of disability: An intersectionality approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(8), pages 1236-1248, April.
    15. Sara Rellstab & Marco Pecoraro & Alberto Holly & Philippe Wanner & Karine Renard, 2016. "The Migrant Health Gap and the Role of Labour Market Status: Evidence from Switzerland," IRENE Working Papers 16-14, IRENE Institute of Economic Research.
    16. Kwak, Kyunghwa, 2016. "An evaluation of the healthy immigrant effect with adolescents in Canada: Examinations of gender and length of residence," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 87-95.
    17. Santosh Jatrana & Ken Richardson & Samba Siva Rao Pasupuleti, 2018. "The Effect of Nativity, Duration of Residence, and Age at Arrival on Obesity: Evidence from an Australian Longitudinal Study," VID Working Papers 1811, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
    18. Asanin, Jennifer & Wilson, Kathi, 2008. ""I spent nine years looking for a doctor": Exploring access to health care among immigrants in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(6), pages 1271-1283, March.
    19. Dean, Jennifer Asanin & Wilson, Kathi, 2010. ""My health has improved because I always have everything I need here...": A qualitative exploration of health improvement and decline among immigrants," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(8), pages 1219-1228, April.
    20. Liang, Jersey & Wang, Chia-Ning & Xu, Xiao & Hsu, Hui-Chuan & Lin, Hui-Shen & Lin, Yu-Hsuan, 2010. "Trajectory of functional status among older Taiwanese: Gender and age variations," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(6), pages 1208-1217, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:joimai:v:19:y:2018:i:2:d:10.1007_s12134-018-0546-4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.