CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Surprisingly, adolescents born in the United States to immigrant parents suffer poorer health and engage in riskier behaviors than children born in other countries who then move here with their parents.
That's the chief conclusion of a new study conducted on 20,000 randomly selected U.S. teens by Dr. Kathleen Mullan Harris as part of a larger University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study.
"Rising immigration from Latin America and Asia has increased public concern over immigrant children because language barriers, poverty and cultural practices can stigmatize and isolate them from mainstream youth cultures and slow the process by which they assimilate into American society," Harris said. "At a time when state and federal policies seek to restrict health services and benefits to the immigrant population, immigrant families face increasing poverty and limited access to health care."
Harris is associate professor of sociology and a fellow at UNC-CH's Carolina Population Center.
A report on her study will appear later this fall in the National Research Council book, "Children of Immigrants: Health, Adjustment, and Public Assistance." The research was based on data from the Add Health project, a UNC-CH-based study involving health and behavior-related interviews with adolescents across the United States.
"In sum, the most striking finding is the pattern of assimilation displayed by the increasing health problems and increasing propensity to engage in health risk behaviors across immigrant generations of youth," Harris said. "Perhaps the most consistent finding is that foreign-born adolescents have better physical health and engage in less risk behavior, with the exception of use of birth control at first intercourse.
"Foreign-born youth experience fewer physical health problems, have less experience with sex, are less likely to engage in delinquent and violent behavior and are less likely to use controlled substances than native-born youth."
Findings of health deterioration rather than improvement were remarkably consistent, she said. Among foreign-born youth, statistical analysis showed the longer the time since arrival in the United States, the poorer was adolescents' physical health and the greater the likelihood of engaging in risky behaviors. Specific health measures analyzed were general health, missed school due to health or emotional problems, learning difficulties, obesity, asthma and health risk behaviors involving sexual intercourse, unprotected sex, delinquency, violence and substance use.
Mexican, Central and South American, Filipino and other Asian youth showed the strongest negative effects from becoming "Americanized," Harris added.
For example, foreign-born Mexican youth are less likely than native-born youth of Mexican parents to miss school for a health or emotional problem, to have learning difficulties, to be obese or to suffer asthma. They also are less likely to have had sex, to engage in delinquent or violent acts or to use three or more controlled substances.
Island-born Puerto Rican adolescents do not enjoy better health than foreign-born immigrant children, which suggests they have more in common with native U.S. adolescents. Chinese youth stand out as the ethnic group least engaged in risky behaviors, while Hispanic youth are the most engaged.
"Trying to explain differences between youth groups would all be speculation at this point," Harris said. "I am now studying why they occur and mechanisms that operate in the assimilation process. I plan to explore family processes, peer networks, school climate and neighborhood characteristics that might explain how protective factors associated with immigrant status are lost over time and across generations."
Last year, the Add Health study made national news when it showed conclusively that parents, feeling connected with one's school and religious faith continue to influence children positively well into adolescence.
Drs. J. Richard Udry and Peter Bearman of the UNC-CH sociology department and the Carolina Population Center designed the study with colleagues at the University of Minnesota. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development funded the project with help from the National Cancer Institute. the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Center for Health Statistics, the National Science Foundation and a dozen other U.S. institutes and health agencies.
Note: Harris can be reached at 919-966-5560 (w) or 942-0148 (h).