Exploring the Health Status of Immigrants in the United States

Paola Echave , The Ohio State University
Jake Tarrence, The Ohio State University
Jasmine Whiteside, The Ohio State University

Since the beginning of the 21st century, immigration settlement patterns have started to shift and regions of the US that do not have a long history of sustaining immigration growth are now considered popular immigrant destinations. These changes have implications to various aspects of society including health. We use the Current Population Survey (CPS) to examine the differences of self-reported health of 213,192 foreign born-individuals across 8 types of immigrant destinations. We find that immigrants living in non-traditional immigrant destinations report better health than immigrants living in historical immigrant destinations. This calls to question whether immigration theories regarding the welfare of immigrant populations in historical immigrant destinations downplay the health benefits that may arise from living in new immigrant destinations. The next step of this project is to examine whether community variation in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removals might explain community variation in immigrant health.

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 Presented in Session 6. Health & Mortality & Aging