The Healthy Immigrant Effect: Patterns and Evidence from Four Countries
The Healthy Immigrant Effect: Patterns and Evidence from Four Countries
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DOI：
10.1007/s12134-014-0340-x
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发表时间：
2015-05-01
影响因子：
1.3
通讯作者：
Biddle, Nicholas
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kennedy, Steven;Kidd, Michael P.;Biddle, Nicholas
健康移民效应的存在——即移民平均比本土出生的人更健康——是流行病学和社会科学等众多文献中广泛引用的现象。有许多相互竞争的解释。本文的目标有两个：首先，使用一套一致定义的健康衡量标准，提供进一步的证据，证明健康移民效应在来源国和目的地国之间的存在；其次，评估选择性作为现象存在的潜在解释的作用。利用美国、加拿大、英国和澳大利亚这四个主要移民接收国的数据，我们可以将每个国家的移民与选择不移民的本国出生的人的健康状况进行比较。这代表了比移民接收国本地出生的人更合适的反事实，并为可观察的选择效应的重要性提供了新的见解。分析发现，所有四个目的地国都强烈支持健康的移民效应，并且选择性在观察到的移民相对于留在原籍国的人更好的健康方面发挥着重要作用。
The existence of a healthy immigrant effect-where immigrants are on average healthier than the native born-is a widely cited phenomenon across a multitude of literatures including epidemiology and the social sciences. There are many competing explanations. The goals of this paper are twofold: first, to provide further evidence on the presence of the healthy immigrant effect across source and destination country using a set of consistently defined measures of health; and second, to evaluate the role of selectivity as a potential explanation for the existence of the phenomenon. Utilizing data from four major immigrant recipient countries, USA, Canada, UK, and Australia allows us to compare the health of migrants from each with the respective native born who choose not to migrate. This represents a much more appropriate counterfactual than the native born of the immigrant recipient country and yields new insights into the importance of observable selection effects. The analysis finds strong support for the healthy immigrant effect across all four destination countries and that selectivity plays an important role in the observed better health of migrants vis a vis those who stay behind in their country of origin.