Educational Selectivity and the Immigrant–Native Health Disparity

• In Event: Work, Education, and Migration

Abstract

Selectivity is a key explanation for immigrant health advantage, yet existing evidence often conflates selection with post-migration health assimilation, leaving the mechanism of health selection underspecified. This study examines the extent to which educational selectivity accounts for immigrants’ health advantage and whether its contribution varies across ethnoracial groups. We measure educational selectivity as contextual attainment—immigrants’ percentile rank within origin-country educational distributions by birth cohort and gender. Linking the 2002–2018 National Health Interview Survey data to mortality records, we examine mortality, smoking, and activity limitation among first-generation Asian and Latino immigrants. Accounting for contextual attainment reduces immigrants’ health advantages across all three outcomes, with larger declines when comparing immigrants to native-born coethnics than to native Whites. The contribution of educational selectivity remains consistent across duration-of-residence strata. Across six countries of origin, conditioning on contextual attainment eliminates the health advantage among Chinese immigrants and reverses the mortality advantage among Cuban immigrants and the activity limitation advantage among Dominicans into disadvantages relative to native-born coethnics. This study provides novel evidence on educational selectivity as a mechanism underlying immigrants' health advantages in the United States and highlights the importance of the reference group in interpreting immigrant-native health disparities.

Authors

• Hao Liang, Cornell University

• Kristin Liao, University of California-Los Angeles