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Educational gradients in five Asian immigrant populations: Do country of origin, duration and generational status moderate the education-health relationship?

ABSTRACT: Education usually shows a relationship with self-rated health such that those with highest education have the best health and those with lowest education have the worst health. We examine these educational gradients among Asian immigrants and whether they differ by country of origin, duration in the United States, and generational status. Migration theories suggest that recent immigrants from poorer countries should show a weaker relationship between education and health than US-born Whites. Acculturation theory further suggests that differences in gradients across country of origin should diminish for longer-term immigrants and the US-born and that these groups should display gradients similar to US-born Whites. We use the March Current Population Survey (2000 - 2010) to examine educational gradients in self-rated health among recent immigrants (? 15 years duration), longer-term immigrants (> 15 years duration), and second generation US-born Asians from China (n = 4473), India (n = 4,307), the Philippines (n = 5746), South Korea (n = 2760), and Japan (n = 1265). We find weak or non-significant educational gradients among recent Asian immigrants across the five countries of origin. There is no indication that longer-term immigrants display significant differences across educational status. Only second generation Chinese and Filipinos show significant differences by educational status. Overall, Asians show an attenuated relationship between education and self-rated health compared to US-Whites that persists over duration in the US and generational status. Our findings show shortcomings in migration and acculturation theories to explain these gradient patterns. Future research could use binational data or explore psychosocial factors to identify potential suppressors of educational gradients.

SUBMITTER: Ro A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4963251 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Educational gradients in five Asian immigrant populations: Do country of origin, duration and generational status moderate the education-health relationship?

Ro Annie A Geronimus Arline A Bound John J Griffith Derek D Gee Gilbert G

Preventive medicine reports 20160711

Education usually shows a relationship with self-rated health such that those with highest education have the best health and those with lowest education have the worst health. We examine these educational gradients among Asian immigrants and whether they differ by country of origin, duration in the United States, and generational status. Migration theories suggest that recent immigrants from poorer countries should show a weaker relationship between education and health than US-born Whites. Acc ...[more]

PMID: 27486564

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Project description:Little is known about the importance of household wealth for child neurodevelopment very early in life including during infancy. Previous studies have focused on specific developmental domains instead of more holistic multi-domain measures of neurodevelopment and on economic effects for the "average" child instead of evaluating the heterogeneity in economic gradients by different levels of developmental ability. Furthermore, not much is known about whether economic gradients in early child neurodevelopment are country-specific or generalizable between populations. We evaluate wealth gradients in child neurodevelopment, an important predictor of future health and human capital, between ages 3 and 24 months in four South American countries. We also assess the heterogeneity in these gradients at different locations of the neurodevelopment distribution using quantile regression. Employing a unique dataset of 2032 children with neurodevelopment measures obtained by physicians in 2005-2006, we find a large positive wealth gradient in neurodevelopment in Brazil. The wealth gradient is larger for children at higher neurodevelopment rankings, suggesting that wealth is associated with child development inequalities in the form of a wider gap between low and high achievers on neurodevelopment in Brazil. This result highlights the need to target poverty in Brazil as a key factor in health and human capital disparities earlier in life rather than later as early developmental deficits will be carried forward and possibly multiplied later in life. More importantly, small or insignificant wealth gradients are generally found in the other countries. These results suggest that wealth gradients in child neurodevelopment are country-specific and vary with population demographic, health, and socioeconomic characteristics. Therefore, findings from previous studies based on specific populations may not be generalizable to other countries. Furthermore, wealth gradients in child neurodevelopment appear to be dynamic rather than fixed and sensitive to population characteristics that modify their intensity.

Dataset Information

Educational gradients in five Asian immigrant populations: Do country of origin, duration and generational status moderate the education-health relationship?

Publications

Educational gradients in five Asian immigrant populations: Do country of origin, duration and generational status moderate the education-health relationship?

Similar Datasets

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