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Selection, Wear, and Tear
The Health of Hispanics and Hispanic Immigrants in the United States
Among the factors that complicate the study of Hispanic health are data artifacts and cultural differences that originate from different degrees of assimilation. This dissertation provides a better understanding of the issues surrounding the health of Hispanics in general, and of Hispanic immigrants in particular. The author examines differences in health status between non-Hispanic Whites, Mexican Americans, and Mexican immigrants, and proposes an index of biological risk. He finds indirect evidence supporting the “healthy migrant” hypothesis, which states that emigrants are positively selected in their health status from the population of their countries of origin. Two hypotheses explaining the decline in immigrant health are consistent with the author's results: (1) the “life-course” hypothesis, which states that the deterioration of immigrant health status is a result of the cumulative negative effect of the adversities associated with the process of migration, and (2) the “regression to the mean” hypothesis, which maintains that immigrants self-select on health at the time of migration, but over time their health converges to the average health levels in their home countries.
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Contents
Chapter One:
Introduction and Research Questions
Chapter Two:
Hispanic Health in the United States: A Review
Chapter Three:
Health Differences Between USBorn Mexicans, Mexican Immigrants and NonHispanic Whites: An Analysis of the Hispanic Paradox Using Propensity-Score Methods
Chapter Four:
Changes in Immigrant Health with Length of Residence in the United States: A Semiparametric Analysis
Chapter Five:
Discussion
This document was submitted as a dissertation in May 2009 in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the doctoral degree in public policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. The faculty committee that supervised and approved the dissertation consisted of Jose Escarce (Chair), Emma Aguila, and Krishna Kumar.
This product is part of the Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS) dissertation series. PRGS dissertations are produced by graduate fellows of the Pardee RAND Graduate School, the world's leading producer of Ph.D.'s in policy analysis. The dissertation has been supervised, reviewed, and approved by a PRGS faculty committee overseeing the dissertation.
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