How Do Nativity and Citizenship Affect Access to Healthcare Among Older Adults? Findings From California, 2011–2017

• In Event: 4266 - Section on Aging and the Life Course Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 7. Healthcare and Community Organizations

Abstract

Building on recent work emphasizing the importance of considering nativity influences in research on health disparities, this study explores how nativity and citizenship status affect access to care. Using individual-level data from the 2011–2017 California Health Interview Surveys (CHIS), descriptive comparisons of U.S.-born U.S. citizen, naturalized citizen, and non-citizen older adults will be conducted to determine how, if at all, access disparities exist. Logistic regression models will be used to estimate nativity and citizenship associations with access-related indicators. In California, non-citizen older adults access health care at lower rates than citizen older adults. Relative to being a U.S.-born citizen, being a naturalized or non-citizen is associated with significantly lower odds of being currently insured, having a usual place to go to for health care, and having visited a doctor within the past year; and these effects persist even when controlling for a range of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Assuming the similarity of citizens’ and non-citizens’ healthcare needs, the continuation—and, for some indicators, the widening—of access differentials by nativity and citizenship status over time may potentially explain outcome disparities for older adults in the U.S.

Author

• Hilary Flowers, UCLA