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Wbeghm267 Riosmena & Jochem Health and Migration Latin Americans in The United States
Wbeghm267 Riosmena & Jochem Health and Migration Latin Americans in The United States
The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, Edited by Immanuel Ness. 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm267
return migration, better known as the salmon bias hypothesis. As most studies looking at the health of migrants use US-based data only, they only observe those members of an immigrant cohort who still remain in the United States. If those less healthy are more likely to leave the United States, whether solely due to their poor health or due to other reasons associated with poor health, the observed health of remaining migrants will appear to be better than it would otherwise have been if returnees had not left or were included in these calculations. Studies that have been able to directly compare the health of both immigrants in the United States and return migrants back in the country of origin have found some salmon bias. However, as in the case of data errors, this statistical artifact cannot explain the entire immigrant health advantage as the amount of bias is modest (Turra & Elo 2008) or as the immigrant health advantage is still observed in populations with negligible return migration (Abrado-Lanza et al. 1999). Emigration selection Other explanations for the HHP must thus lie elsewhere. The fact that immigrants have better health outcomes than non-Hispanic whites could reflect the fact that their health is better than those of (nonmigrants) left behind. If so, the HHP is the product of (positive) emigration selection, a set of processes whereby health itself or unmeasured characteristics correlated with health are associated with emigration to the United States. This is likely, given that migration tends to be a hard and selective endeavor (Orrenius & Zavodny 2005). Notwithstanding the plausibility of this argument, most studies dealing with this topic fail to test emigration selection directly by comparing the health conditions of migrants (or, better, migrants-to-be) with those of their nonmigrant counterparts. The handful of studies that manage to directly compare the experience of immigrants in the United States with nonmigrants in sending countries have found some but generally weak evidence consistent with positive emigration selection (e.g., Rubalcava et al. 2008). Thus, selection may not
Conclusions
We have briefly shown the complexity of mechanisms affecting Latino migrant health. On the one hand, the Latino immigrant health advantage is indeed partially the result of some data problems and due to the return migration of people with slightly worse health to their