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Decomposing the differences in healthy life expectancy between migrants and natives: the ‘healthy migrant effect’ and its age variations in Australia

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Abstract

Whether the ‘healthy migrant effect’ exhibits different patterns in mortality and morbidity and how such patterns change during the life course have not been adequately understood in the literature. Using the datasets of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, this study presents an in-depth investigation of the healthy migrant effect and its age variations in Australia. Specifically, this study estimates life expectancy (LE) and healthy life expectancy (HLE) of the Australia-born and overseas-born populations, as well as eight Australian migrant groups, and decomposes the HLE differences into mortality and morbidity differences from three dimensions: age, gender and country of birth. The results reveal that compared with the Australia-born population, the overseas-born population enjoys a prominently longer LE; however, they suffer a similar or lower HLE after age 65 and a lower HLE/LE ratio throughout all ages. Young overseas-born adults manifest a more significant health advantage in both mortality and morbidity than early-life and older overseas-born individuals; however, the morbidity advantage of young migrants, particularly those who are female and originated from culturally different countries, declines dramatically with ageing. The results suggest that overall, migrants do not have the same advantage in morbidity as they do in mortality and that health advantages of migrants decreases with time in both dimensions of health and more rapidly for morbidity. The results suggest that pertinent policies are needed to reduce acculturation-related challenges and to mitigate the decline in migrants’ health in the post-migration environment to ensure better quality of life outcomes of migrants.

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Notes

  1. Some of the references in this paragraph used mortality rather than the prevalence of a certain health indicator (e.g. infectious diseases). Using cause of certain health conditions can reflect the health level of a certain group and the health disparities by place of birth. However, such practices might not be efficient to reflect the differences by place of birth of some long-term chronic conditions that tend to be not fatal but affect quality of life in the long run.

  2. ABS: https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3101.0Jun 2018?OpenDocument.

  3. ABS: https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/microdata-tablebuilder/available-microdata-tablebuilder/census-population-and-housing#using-the-basic-curf.

  4. ABS: Source: mortality data in 2016, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3302.02016?OpenDocument; mortality data in 2011, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3302.02011?OpenDocument; mortality data in 2006, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3302.02006?OpenDocument.

  5. Note that communication difficulties caused by English language improficiency are not considered a cause of poor health.

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Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Project- Demographic and Social Dimensions of Migrant Ageing and Wellbeing in Australia (grant number DP190102778). The funding organisation did not have any influence on the study design, data collection, analysis and interpretation as well as the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript for publication.

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  1. Centre for Health Systems and Safety Research, Macquarie University, Level 6, 75 Talavera Road, North Ryde, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia

    Guogui Huang

  2. Department of Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Fei Guo & Zhiming Cheng

  3. Deakin Business School, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia

    Lucy Taksa & Marika Franklin

  4. School of Business, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia

    Massimiliano Tani

  5. Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

    Lihua Liu

  6. Global Labor Organization (GLO), Essen, Germany

    Klaus F. Zimmermann

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Huang, G., Guo, F., Taksa, L. et al. Decomposing the differences in healthy life expectancy between migrants and natives: the ‘healthy migrant effect’ and its age variations in Australia. J Pop Research 41, 3 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-023-09325-8

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