UF Study: Latino Groups Face Different Prospects For Health In U.S.

April 18, 2005

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Health deteriorates for Mexican immigrants after they become Americanized, but it improves for Puerto Ricans — and some Cubans and Dominicans — the longer they remain in the United States, a new University of Florida study finds.

“Latinos clearly differ by groups when it comes to health, despite the tendency to lump them all together and assume they’re identical because they come from Latin America and speak Spanish,” said Barbara Zsembik, a UF sociologist whose paper has been accepted for publication in the journal Social Science and Medicine.

Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States, making up about 15 percent of the country’s population, followed by 12 percent for blacks, Zsembik said. The share of Latinos is projected to grow to about 25 percent by 2050, she said.

“If Latinos as a group are in poorer health and not covered by health insurance or have a higher rate of claiming disability, ignoring their health is going to cost taxpayers money,” she said.

Zsembik and Dana Fennell, a UF sociology graduate student, studied health outcomes for 12,028 Mexicans, 2,268 Puerto Ricans, 1,432 Cubans and 388 Dominicans as measured by a set of surveys between 1997 and 2001 by the National Center of Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. The study examined the number of chronic medical conditions, the number of physical impairments and self-rated health.

Mexicans are an epidemiological paradox in that they are healthiest as poor immigrants, Zsembik said. The longer they live in the United States and adopt its cultural customs, the more bad habits they acquire, which they then pass to succeeding generations, she said.

For example, Mexicans who move to the United States bear bigger and healthier babies than whites even though whites often have health insurance that covers prenatal care, Zsembik said. “One argument is that their culture protects them with all sorts of family care and rules about what pregnant women are supposed to eat and do,” she said.

By the second or third generation, Mexican women, especially those who are poor, give birth to less healthy babies, perhaps because they adopt bad habits they acquire in their new country, such as smoking during pregnancy, she said.

Another example of negative acculturation is Mexican teenagers who start to smoke, drink or acquire other unwholesome practices, abandoning the healthy habits of their parents as they undergo an identity crisis trying to make their way in a white world, Zsembik said.

“They come with cultural buffers and over time the buffers disappear and they start to look as unhealthy as whites,” she said.

In addition, many Mexicans tend to be overweight, sedentary and have poor diets, Zsembik said. The Mexican diet, especially the American version, is heavy in fatty foods such as flour tortillas, cheese and lard, she said.

“And the activity craze has not really hit Mexicans, as it has other Americans, as something they value or have time for,” she said. “Puerto Ricans interestingly tend to be a little bit thinner. Neither they nor Cubans are as likely to have this problem of being overweight.”

Puerto Ricans enter the United States in worse health than other Latinos, Zsembik said. They resemble blacks in this country in that they frequently migrate to the large cities, are poor and don’t have health insurance, making preventive care unaffordable, she said.

Unlike Mexicans, Puerto Ricans’ health improves the longer they remain in the United States, largely because their income increases and they can afford health care, Zsembik said.

Cubans and Dominicans provide less clear-cut profiles, but their experience resembles that of Puerto Ricans more than Mexicans. Little is known about Dominicans, one of the fastest growing ethnic groups, because so many are undocumented immigrants, Zsembik said.

“The poorer Dominicans are searching for a better life in this country, and whatever the effects of poverty they experienced in the Dominican Republic they bring with them,” she said.

Cubans, an older immigrant group, can become healthier or unhealthier as they grow accustomed to American ways, Zsembik said. Although Cuban immigrants have more health problems than Cubans born in the United States, the positive effects of acculturation may decrease with increased exposure to bad habits, she said.

Kristen Peek, a professor in the department of preventive medicine and community health at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said Zsembik’s research is “very important in that researchers tend to lump Hispanics together as one group, when this is a vastly diverse population who experience the effects and process of acculturation very differently.”