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Investigating Health Selection Within Mexico and Across the US Border

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Abstract

Despite acquiring lower levels of attainment and earnings, Mexican immigrants exhibit favorable health outcomes relative to their native-born counterparts. And while scholars attempt to reconcile this so-called paradoxical relationship with a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches, patterns of selective migration continue to receive considerable attention. The present study contributes to the literature on health selection by extending the healthy migrant hypothesis in a number of ways. First, we rely on a unique combination of datasets to assess whether the healthy are disproportionately more likely to migrate. We use the latest wave of the Mexican Family Life Survey and the 2013 Migrante Study, a survey that is representative of Mexican-born persons who are actively migrating through Tijuana. Pooling these data also allow us to differentiate between internal and US-bound migrants to shed light on their respective health profiles. Results provide modest support for the healthy migrant hypothesis. Although those who report better overall health are more likely to migrate, we find that the presence of certain chronic conditions increases migration risk. Our findings also suggest that internal migrants are healthier than those traveling to the US, though this is largely because those moving within Mexico reflect a younger and more educated population. This study takes an important step in uncovering variation across migrant flows and highlights the importance of the timing at which health is measured in the migration process.

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Notes

  1. Jürges and colleagues (2008) specifically suggest collapsing excellent/very good categories in addition to combining poor/very good categories. The resulting measure is a 4-category measure of self-reported health: excellent/very good, good, fair, poor/very poor.

  2. We deliberated using the MxFLS-3 (2009–2012) follow-up to draw comparisons with the Migrante, but MxFLS-3 movers have already experienced a change in social and local context when interviews were performed; this means health and socioeconomic status are confounded with exposure to the receiving context. We then considered assessing those who have not migrated in the MxFLS-2 (2005–2006) but will later migrate in the MxFL-3. However, it would be difficult to determine whether any differences in migrant attributes would reflect potential issues with the Migrante or actual changes in migration flows during this 7–8-year period.

  3. Among US residents aged 18 or older, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 29% of the population has been diagnosed with hypertension, nearly 12% suffer from heart disease, 23% have arthritis, and 9.3% suffer from diabetes during the 2010–2013 period.

  4. For conclusions to substantively change, it would have to be the case that uninsured non-migrants (38.8% of the MxFLS sample) disproportionally suffer from undiagnosed chronic conditions relative to migrants who are uninsured.

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Acknowledgements

The Migrante study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grant R01 HD046886). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

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  1. School of Sociology, University of Arizona, Social Sciences Building, 1145 E. South Campus Drive, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Christina J. Diaz & Liwen Zeng

  2. Dornslife School of Public Health, Drexel University, Nesbitt Hall, 3215 Market St., Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Ana P. Martinez-Donate

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  1. Christina J. Diaz
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Diaz, C.J., Zeng, L. & Martinez-Donate, A.P. Investigating Health Selection Within Mexico and Across the US Border. Popul Res Policy Rev 37, 181–204 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-017-9456-y

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