[Read From Generation to Generation at National Academy of Sciences website]
WASHINGTON—Attention all immigrant children: assimilating into the ''American Way of Life'' may be hazardous to your physical and emotional health.
That is the tentative conclusion of a major new report on the children of immigrant families released here Wednesday by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.
The 314-page report, 'From Generation to Generation,' found that, despite their higher rates of poverty, ''children in immigrant families appear to experience better health and adjustment than do children in US-born families.''
The authors of the report - which was based on a panel review of dozens of studies between 1900 and 1990 - discovered that as second and third-generation immigrants assimilate into U.S. society, their health, actually declines.
The panel, which includes some of the nation's top experts in public health, medicine, sociology and demography, suggested that a number of cultural and related factors may work to protect first- and second-generation immigrant children, including diet, greater family cohesion, stronger discipline, and other cultural norms, such as taboos against smoking, drinking and pre-marital sex.
''Immigrant kids eat less junk food; they eat more traditional diets - more whole grains and fewer french fries and hamburgers,'' said Donald Hernandez, who coordinated the study.
At the same time, the report stressed that performance varied greatly among different immigrant groups. Immigrant children from Mexico and Central America, for example, were generally less healthy than the native-born population, a condition which persists over several generations.
Immigrants from 12 countries, accounting for almost 50 percent of all immigrant children, generally did not do as well as the rest of the sample, in part due to the higher rates of poverty (26- 51 percent) which they experience here.
These included immigrants from Mexico, most of Central America, Indochina, and Thailand, the former Soviet Union, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. The study noted that a higher proportion of family from these regions also were more likely to have parents with little formal education and were more likely to live in overcrowded conditions - both ''risk factors'' for poorer health and educational performance.
Even these immigrants, however, were found to be generally healthier and and greater educational achievement than
For purposes of the study, first-generation immigrants were defined as those children who came to the United States after their birth; second-generation immigrants are those who were born in the United States of at least one foreign-born parent.
The findings clearly implied tht adapting to a US life-style, particularly by immigrant children living in poverty, often is damagig to their health and well-being in a number of ways. At the same time, the report stressed that research in this area had been ''patchy'', although ''quite consistent'' over time.
As a result, it recommended further research both to test the validity of the findings and to determine which protective factors may be more important. ''A central challenge involves identifying the factors - genetic, familial, behavioral, environmental - tied to the countries of origin that play into these protective functions,'' the report said.
The United States accepted more immigrants each year than any other country in the world - about one million. Altogether about 20 percent of all children under age 18 in the United States today is an immigrant or has at least one immigrant parent.
The majority of these children are of Hispanic or Asian origin, the fastest-growing ethnic sector in the total U.S. poulation. According to the 1990 census, the largest national group by far is first- and second-generation children from Mexico, followed by Filipinos, Canadians, from Vietnamese, and Salvadorans.
Immigrant children in 1990 experienced, on average, a higher poverty rate than youth in US-born families. While poverty is normally associated with poorer health and educational achievement, that relationship did not appear to hold for many immigrant children.
Many studies, for example, found that children born to poor immigrant mothers are less likely to have low birthweight or to die in the first year of life than are children born to US-born mothers from the same ethnic group. Fernandez attributed this result to traditional norms against smoking and drinking by women which they brought to the United States from their homelands.
Immigrant parents also reported that their children experience fewer acute and chronic health problems compared with third-and- later generation families.
And adolescents in immigrant families reported fewer neurological problems, obesity, asthma, early sexual activity, smoking, alcohol-consumption, drug use, delinquency and the use of violence compared with their counterparts among US-born parents, according to the report.
However, these health advantages appeared to fade over time as immigrant children became more assimilated into youth culture - and often minority youth culture - in the United States, according to the report.
Similar trends applied to mental health and educational achievement, the report said. Despite feeling less popular with their classmates and less in control of their own lives, adolescents in immigrant families appear as likely as third-and- later generation adolescents to experience feelings of psychological well-being and avoid feelings of serious distress, the report finds.
More surprising still, children in immigrant families performed, on average, as well or better in school than their third-and-later generation peers, despite receiving generally lower test scores on reading due to their lack of English proficiency.
source: http://www.ips.org/Critical/Enviroment/Environ/env1209002.htm 28oct03
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