Unequal Weathering: How Immigrants’ Health Advantage Vanishes over the Life Course

Silvia Loi, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Peng Li, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Mikko Myrskyla, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

The weathering hypothesis implies that there is an interaction between age and race or ethnicity that results in marginalized groups experiencing a more rapid decline in health than the dominant groups. This hypothesis has been tested mostly based on racial and ethnic health inequality, while less is known about weathering by immigration background. This paper aims at contributing to this strand of research by addressing three research questions: is immigrant health declining at a faster pace over the life-course, compared to the non-immigrant population? Do higher levels of education protect immigrants from accelerated ageing compared to non-immigrants? How do income and marital status affect the health of immigrants and non-immigrants? We focus on Germany and using longitudinal survey data we estimate healthy ageing trajectories over the life-course between immigrants and non-immigrants, including the role of education, income and marital status. We find that immigrants, and especially immigrant women, have a faster health decline than non-immigrants; that high education is linked to higher levels of health, but does not protect immigrants from ageing in poorer health than non-immigrants; health disparities between immigrants and non-immigrants persist over the life-course net of the socioeconomic controls, which are secondary to other unobserved determinants.

Keywords: Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, Health and Morbidity, Migrant Populations and Refugees, Population Ageing

See paper.