Do Immigrants Experience Morbidity and Disability Disadvantages at Older Ages? A Research Note

In a journal article for Demography, Hui Zheng and Wei-hsin Yu find that the Health and Retirement Study dataset, compared to the up-to-date National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), undersamples immigrants who have arrived recently, leading to discrepancies.

Hui Zheng is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto and affiliate faculty member of CGSP.

Citation

Zheng, H., & Yu, W. (2025). Do Immigrants Experience Morbidity and Disability Disadvantages at Older Ages? A Research Note. Demography, 62(5), 1457–1482. https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-12269777

Abstract

Prior studies show that Hispanic and Black immigrants are more susceptible to disabilities and chronic diseases in their later years than U.S.-born Whites, despite their health advantage at younger ages. Such studies often rely on data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which disproportionately includes immigrants who arrived decades ago. The shortage of research on immigrants of other ethnoracial groups further makes it unclear whether the old-age declines in health advantages among Hispanic and Black immigrants are generalizable. Using the up-to-date HRS and National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data, this study compares the prevalences of chronic diseases, functional limitations, and activity limitations between U.S.-born Whites and immigrants of various ethnoracial identities across datasets. We find that Hispanic and Black immigrants in the HRS exhibit significantly greater disability disadvantages at older ages in relation to native-born Whites than those in the NHIS. Older White and Asian immigrants encounter no health disadvantages regardless of data source. We demonstrate that the especially low socioeconomic status of Hispanic immigrants in the HRS, along with the two surveys’ different measurements of activity limitations, partly contributes to the discrepancies between the surveys. We suggest that the HRS design is conducive to undersampling of immigrants arriving more recently, leading to its immigrants’ unique socioeconomic profiles. This study underscores the need for scholars of immigration and health to be cautious about dataset-specific nuances.