Hispanic health paradox through a new lens: Birth outcomes in the rural southeast

Despite low socioeconomic status (SES) and compromised access to care, immigrant women from Mexico have better birth outcomes than blacks, US-born Hispanics, and low SES whites. This phenomenon is referred to as the Hispanic health paradox since it goes against the established relationship that SES has to human health in the US. One explanation for this paradox is that women from Latin American countries come from places with strong normative environments conducive to healthy pregnancies. Their lack of assimilation to US culture and its risky behaviors is protective against adverse birth outcomes. Another explanation is that immigrant women have strong social networks composed of other immigrant families that mitigate the effects of poverty and provide informal systems of care.

While the assimilation and social network arguments of the Hispanic health paradox have been examined in traditional immigrant receiving states, they have not been examined in rural areas or in the “new” south. This presentation draws on geocoded birth records for a rural county in southeast North Carolina to look at the Hispanic health paradox with immigrants from Mexico and Central/South America.