Unhealthy Immigrants: Sources for Health Gaps Between Immigrants and Natives in Israel.

[en] The study focuses on sources for health gaps between Jewish immigrants and native-born Israelis. Unlike traditional immigrant societies where immigration is viewed as economically motivated, immigrants returning to Israel are viewed as the "returning diaspora". Because immigrants in Israel are entitled to the same health benefits and medical services as native-born, we expect Israel to attract unhealthy immigrants in disproportionate numbers. The data for the analysis are obtained from the Israeli National Health Interview Survey (2013-2015). The data set provides detailed information on health status and illness, sociodemographic attributes and origin of immigrants. Three major origin groups of immigrants are distinguished: the former Soviet Union, Western Europeans or the Americans (mostly Ashkenazim), and Asians or North Africans (mostly Sephardim). Our findings lend support to the expectations that the health status of all immigrant groups is poorer than that of native-born Israelis. The nativity-illness gap is most pronounced in the case of male immigrants (from Europe or the Americas or South Africa or Australia) and for female immigrants (from countries in the Middle East or North Africa) and least pronounced in the case of immigrants arriving from the former Soviet Union for both gender groups. Decomposition of the gaps into components reveals that some portion of the illness gap can be attributed to nativity status, but the largest portion of the gap is attributed to demographic characteristics. Neither socioeconomic status nor health-related behavior accounts for a substantial portion of the nativity-illness gap for all subgroups of immigrants.

Disciplines :

Sociology & social sciences

Author, co-author :

Semyonov-Tal, Keren ^✱; Department of Labor Studies, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

MASKILEYSON, Dina ^✱; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Social Sciences (DSOC) > Political Science ; Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences, the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

^✱ These authors have contributed equally to this work.

External co-authors :

yes

Language :

English

Title :

Unhealthy Immigrants: Sources for Health Gaps Between Immigrants and Natives in Israel.

Publication date :

2021

Journal title :

Frontiers in Sociology

eISSN :

2297-7775

Publisher :

Frontiers Media S.A., Switzerland

Volume :

Pages :

686306

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2021.686306/full

Funding text :

The authors would like to thank Lisa Trierweiler for the English proof of the manuscript. We also extend our gratitude to Moshe Semyonov for the helpful comments and suggestions. Finally, we would like to thank the Ministry of Health of Israel and Lital Keinan-Boker for providing the data.

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since 12 March 2024

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