Abstract
Mexican Americans have a lower prevalence of asthma than White Americans, Black Americans, and Other Hispanics. This is concordant with the Hispanic Paradox, which posits that Hispanics have good health and lower mortality than White Americans despite their relative socioeconomic disadvantages. However, the research is limited in relation to the effects of race on health, independent of ethnicity, among this population. In this study, the author disaggregated Mexican Americans, foreign-born and U.S.-born into two categories, White and Black Mexicans, in order to assess their likelihood of having an asthma diagnosis, compared to White Americans and to each other. This study used harmonized data from the National Health Interview Survey from 2000–2018 with a final analytic sample of N = 1,094,516. The analysis was conducted using binary logistic regression, controlling for acculturation and health behavior-related variables, as well as sociodemographic characteristics. In the results, Black Mexicans had a significant disadvantage in relation to their White counterparts and White Americans. The findings suggest there is an intra-ethnic racial disparity in asthma and the Hispanic paradox is not applicable across racial lines for Mexican Americans. These findings also suggest Black Mexicans’ poor asthma outcomes are the byproduct of various mechanisms of racial inequality.
Highlights
According to the latest data from 2017 and 2018, asthma has a current prevalence of 7.9% and a lifetime prevalence of 13% in the United States [1, 2]
The vast majority of White Americans and Black Americans were born in the United States
Among Mexicans, 45.7% of White Mexicans and 55.8% of Black Mexicans were born in the U.S Among the foreign-born, those who have resided in the U.S for 15 years or more comprised the largest group
Summary
According to the latest data from 2017 and 2018, asthma has a current prevalence of 7.9% and a lifetime prevalence of 13% in the United States [1, 2]. The current asthma prevalence for Hispanics is 6.4%, which is lower than the population prevalence and lower than the prevalence for White Americans (8.1%), Black Americans (10.1%), and Other non-Hispanics (6.7%). Among Hispanics—and more saliently among Mexican Americans—we can observe the Hispanic Paradox in full effect. The Hispanic Paradox is the counterintuitive finding that Hispanics have better or comparable health and mortality profiles relative to non-Hispanic Whites (hereinafter called White Americans) despite their significant socioeconomic disadvantages [3, 4]. Within this literature, nativity is a strong
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