Racial Discrimination and the Health of Asian Americans: Findings from the California Health Interview Survey

BACKGROUND: Immigrants are often healthier than non-immigrants. However, increasing duration in the U.S. often erodes this health advantage and duration is associated with greater self-reported racial discrimination. Discrimination may abrade some of the resources that immigrants initially possess, although this idea has not been well-studied. OBJECTIVE: We investigate three hypotheses: (1) Self-reported discrimination will be positively associated with duration and (2) negatively associated with well-being; (3) duration will moderate the association between discrimination and well-being. We explore whether these associations vary by ethnicity. METHODS: We analyze the 2003 California Health Interview Survey, focusing on foreign-born adults of Chinese (n=997), Japanese (n=111), Korean (n=451), Filipino(n=560), South Asian (n=379), and Vietnamese (n=430) ancestry. Well-being was measured by general health status, physically unhealthy days, mentally unhealthy days, and activity limitation days. Discrimination was measured with self-reported frequency of discriminatory treatment due to race; duration was measured by years of U.S. residence. Regression models included the covariates of age, income, education, gender, residence, family composition and health insurance. RESULTS: Preliminary analyses suggest that increased U.S duration is associated with greater self-reported discrimination for each Asian group, but was significant only among Chinese and Filipinos. Perceived discrimination was associated with all four measures of well-being for Chinese; mentally unhealthy and activity limitation days for Filipinos, Koreans and Vietnamese; physically unhealthy days for South Asians. Contrary to our hypothesis, discrimination did not consistently vary by duration. CONCLUSIONS: Discrimination was associated with diminished well-being, but this association was not robustly moderated by years in the U.S.