Anti-immigrant prejudice linked to mortality risk

“The General Social Survey has been repeated since 1978, and it features a lot of measures concerning people’s opinions toward things like race and religion and politics,” Morey said. Among other measures, the survey asks respondents to rate on a scale from one to five their agreement or disagreement with statements such as:

·  “America should take stronger measures to exclude illegal immigrants.”

·  “Immigrants take jobs away from people who were born in America.”

·  “Immigrants increase crime rates.”

·  “Immigrants are generally good for America’s economy.”

· By looking at survey responses, the researchers were able to compare varying levels of anti-immigrant prejudice in individual communities.

· In the interest of evaluating GSS respondents’ health outcomes, the team also drew on the National Death Index, a centralized database of death record information. Combining data from the survey and the index allowed the researchers to study, for the very first time, “whether community-level anti-immigrant prejudice is associated with mortality risk,” they explained.

· All told, their final sample contained 13,242 respondents living in 123 communities known as primary sampling units, or PSUs. The final sample also took into account respondents’ race and whether they had been born in or outside the U.S.

· The researchers noted that prior to 2002, the GSS didn’t allow self-reporting of race and only included three racial categories: white, black, and “other race.” Beginning in 2002, those categories were expanded to include American Indian, Alaska Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, and Hispanic.

·  The final sample’s racial breakdown was 79 percent white, 14 percent black, and 8 percent “other race,” with 47 percent of “other race” respondents born in the U.S. and 53 percent born in foreign countries.

·  While black GSS respondents had the highest overall mortality rate as of 2014, “other race” respondents had the lowest.

· Yet a closer read of the data revealed a notable set of trends: U.S.-born “other race” respondents had greater mortality risk in PSUs that were identified as high-prejudice communities, compared with those living in low-prejudice communities. Foreign-born “other race” respondents, meanwhile, showed the opposite — their mortality risk was actually lower when they lived in high-prejudice communities as opposed to low-prejudice communities.

· “I didn’t necessarily think it would matter whether respondents were foreign-born or U.S.-born, since anyone who might be assumed to be an immigrant could be a target of anti-immigrant sentiment,” Morey said. “But I was surprised that it was actually the U.S.-born ethnic-minority respondents who were doing much worse versus the foreign-born immigrants who seemed to be doing better.”

·                  The researchers also created a subsample of respondents who had self-identified as Asian or Hispanic beginning in 2002; the results for this smaller subsample corresponded with the results for the larger “other race” category.

·                  They suggested a variety of explanations for why foreign-born immigrants seem to experience a mortality advantage. For starters, the foreign-born respondents who had been surveyed tended to have been living in the States for less time than their U.S.-born counterparts who had grown up here. As a result, foreign-born immigrants were less likely to have experienced direct community-level prejudice, or to have internalized anti-immigrant sentiments.

· “Exposure to discrimination in adolescence has negative effects on mental health and health behaviors that, over time, could increase risk for morbidity and mortality,” the researchers added, noting that U.S.-born ethnic minorities might suffer more long-term effects of community-level prejudice because they’re more integrated into the dominant culture.

· On the other hand, living in close-knit ethnic enclaves within larger, more prejudiced communities might serve as a form of protection for foreign-born immigrants who benefit from “more homogenous social networks of other immigrants.” Such networks could provide both health-boosting social capital and double as barriers against anti-immigrant prejudice.

— Read more in Brittany N. Morey et al., “Community-level prejudice and mortality among immigrant groups,” Social Science & Medicine 199 (February 2018): 56-66 (DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.04.020)