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The Relationship Between Duration of U.S. Residence, Educational Attainment, and Adult Health Among Asian Immigrants

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Abstract

There is substantial educational heterogeneity among Asian immigrants to the United States, suggesting that the association between duration of U.S. residence with their health outcomes and behaviors may vary considerably by educational attainment. Using data from the 2003 New Immigrant Survey (N = 2,373), we find strong evidence that the detrimental associations between duration of U.S. residence and self-reported health, activity limitation status, chronic health conditions, and current smoking are concentrated among Asian immigrants with less than a high school education; in contrast, the health outcomes and behaviors of Asian immigrants who have at least a high school degree exhibit very few differences by duration of U.S. residence. These distinct duration–health patterns by educational attainment are not explained by duration-related differences in country of origin, class of admission, or English speaking skills. We also find a stronger duration relationship with current smoking than those with the health status measures among the least educated Asian men, indicating a potential behaviorally based explanation for poorer health among Asian immigrant men with longer duration of residence.

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Notes

  1. As a result, the NIS excludes current unauthorized immigrants, those who are on temporary employment/student visas, as well as naturalized citizens and long-term immigrants who gained permanent residency before 2003.

  2. The first wave of the NIS is cross-sectional in nature, but the New Immigrant Survey is a longitudinal study. Future longitudinal analysis will shed more light on immigrant health change.

  3. Walton et al. (2009) demonstrated the importance of place of education for understanding the relationship between education and health among Asian Americans. Thus, we performed additional analysis on the effect of having a U.S. education on Asian immigrant health. Our results show that whether the respondents had at least one year of U.S. education does not have a statistically significant association with health status or behaviors among Asian immigrants (results available upon request). Furthermore, limiting the sample to Asian immigrants whose highest degree was not obtained in the United States results in 306 (12.9 %) cases being dropped from the analysis. The findings are consistent when these cases are either included or excluded (results available upon request).

  4. Although family immigrants have the largest sample size, we set employment immigrants (second largest group) as the reference group because they are usually the most positively selected for good health (Akresh and Frank 2008).

  5. Estimated probabilities for ages 32 and 50 (the lower and upper age quartiles of the sample) are similar to those at age 39 (results available upon request).

  6. In order to best present the data, results for the three health status measures in Fig. 1 use the same scale on the axes. The graphs for the two health behavior measures in Fig. 2 use a different but consistent scale on their axes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Baylor University, One Bear Place #97326, Waco, TX, 76798-7326, USA

    Jing Li

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Texas, 1 University Station A1700, Austin, TX, 78712-0118, USA

    Robert A. Hummer

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  1. Jing Li
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Li, J., Hummer, R.A. The Relationship Between Duration of U.S. Residence, Educational Attainment, and Adult Health Among Asian Immigrants. Popul Res Policy Rev 34, 49–76 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-014-9344-7

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