Duration or Disadvantage? Exploring Nativity, Ethnicity, and Health in Midlife

Objectives . This study examined nativity as a risk factor for poor physical and emotional health for an ethnically diverse population making the transition into retirement. The authors addressed whether the health disadvantage observed for immigrants lessens with increased time spent in the country (supporting theories of assimilation) or increases with duration of residence (supporting theories of cumulative disadvantage). Methods . The sample was drawn from Waves 1 and 2 of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), an in-depth economic, social, and health database of persons in midlife and beyond. The analyses were restricted to 9,912 native-born and 1,031 foreign-born individuals. Results . The data revealed that after socioeconomic factors were controlled, foreign-born individuals were at higher risk of poor emotional health than their native-born counterparts. Although aging immigrants displayed worse health than the native-born population, this disadvantage was mediated by duration of residence (young age at migration) and socioeconomic incorporation. Discussion . These findings extend our understanding of nativity and duration as risk factors for poor physical and emotional health. Immigrants may overcome the nativity disadvantages found for emotional distress with increased duration of residence, but the pattern becomes more complicated with the inclusion of race and Hispanic ethnicity. N this study we considered an important dimension of population diversity, nativity, in explaining health differentials throughout the adult life course. Controlling for economic and social resources, we examined the salience of nativity with respect to self-reported health among an ethnically diverse population poised for retirement. Regardless of selection effects, adult immigrants report worse global health than native-born persons. But, does that health disadvantage lessen or intensify with duration of residence? Exploring differences between two competing approaches of assimilation enabled us to evaluate the potential positive and negative contributions of duration of residence for the health status of aging immigrants compared with that of native-born individuals. We employed the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative sample of individuals nearing retirement in the United States. This dataset is uniquely suited to the proposed analyses for several reasons. First, it contains detailed health, wealth, and labor force participation information (Bound, Schoenbaum, & Waidmann, 1996). Second, it provides information on nativity, including age at migration, and indicators of social isolation. Most important, the longitudinal design of HRS enables the isolation of predictor variables at Time 1 and their relationship to health outcomes at Time 2. Although not a perfect solution to the difficulties associated with disentangling the health‐wealth nexus, this time order helps establish the asymmetry of a causal relationship (Bohrnstedt & Knoke, 1988). Building on previous HRS investigations, these data permit an analysis of the ways in which demographic, social, and economic characteristics indirectly and directly influence the general