title: Epidemiological Paradox or Immigrant Vulnerability? Obesity Among Young Children of Immigrants.
abstract: According to the "immigrant epidemiological paradox," immigrants and their children enjoy health advantages over their U.S.-born peers--advantages that diminish with greater acculturation. We investigated child obesity as a potentially significant deviation from this paradox for second-generation immigrant children. We evaluated two alternate measures of mother's acculturation: age at arrival in the United States and English language proficiency. To obtain sufficient numbers of second-generation immigrant children, we pooled samples across two related, nationally representative surveys. Each included measured (not parent-reported) height and weight of kindergartners. We also estimated models that alternately included and excluded mother's pre-pregnancy weight status as a predictor. Our findings are opposite to those predicted by the immigrant epidemiological paradox: children of U.S.-born mothers were less likely to be obese than otherwise similar children of foreign-born mothers; and the children of the least-acculturated immigrant mothers, as measured by low English language proficiency, were the most likely to be obese. Foreign-born mothers had lower (healthier) pre-pregnancy weight than U.S.-born mothers, and this was protective against their second-generation children's obesity. This protection, however, was not sufficiently strong to outweigh factors associated or correlated with the mothers' linguistic isolation and marginal status as immigrants.
authors.affiliation: University of Alabama at Birmingham, HHB 460F, 1720 2nd Avenue S., Birmingham, AL, 35294, USA, ebaker@uab.edu.
authors.forename: Elizabeth H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Baker
authors.forename: Michael S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Rendall
authors.forename: Margaret M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Weden
mesh_terms: D000069:Acculturation; D000367:Age Factors; D015992:Body Mass Index; D001837:Body Weights and Measures; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D063766:Pediatric Obesity / Q000208:ethnology*; D044469:Racial Groups / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology