Latino Children’s Self-rated Health: The Origin of a Double Paradox?

• In Event: 427 - Section on Medical Sociology Paper Session. Rating Health

Abstract

Despite their well-documented health advantage, Latino adults—in this paper, Latino mothers—tend to assess their health as poorer than other ethnic groups, which constitutes a paradox in the literature. In this paper, we investigate whether Latino children, following their mothers’ patterns, also rate their health as poorer than children of other ethnic groups. If they do, this would constitute a double paradox, where both Latino mothers and their children rate their health worse than their non-Latino counterparts. We use survey data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal study that follows up a cohort of children born between 1998 and 2000, and their families. From our logistic regression analyses, we find that this double paradox may in fact exist between Mexican and non-Hispanic white children. Children with Mexican background have higher odds of rating their health as fair/poor or worse than white children, after controlling for other demographic factors, health conditions, access to care and family structure. We do not find evidence of ethnic differences in mother-child (dis)agreement in ratings of their health. We find, on the other hand, that those children whose mothers were interviewed in Spanish (as a measure of acculturation) were more likely to have better self-rated health than their mothers. In other words, mother’s acculturation to the U.S. may play a role in the way mothers and children assess their health. Future directions and limitations of the study are also addressed.

Authors

• Kelly Kato, State University of New Jersey-Rutgers

• Sharon Bzostek, State University of New Jersey-Rutgers