Differences in the risk of premature cancer mortality between natives and immigrants in Spain

Abstract

Background The healthy immigrant paradox has found wide support in the literature. To evaluate this hypothesis that immigrants have better health outcomes than the native population, this study aimed to compare the premature cancer mortality between the native and immigrant populations in Spain.

Methods We obtained the 2012–15 cause-specific mortality estimates from administrative records and participant characteristics data from the 2011 Spanish census. Using Cox proportional hazards regression models, we calculated the risks of mortality of the native and immigrant populations, and the latter populations’ risk based on their regions of origin, and determined the effects of covariates of interest on the calculated risk.

Results Our results show that the risk of premature cancer mortality is lower among immigrants than among natives, and this gap is higher among men than among women. There is a lower mortality rate among Latin American immigrants (Latino men are 81% less likely to die prematurely from cancer than native-born men, and Latino women are 54% less). Moreover, despite social class disparities, immigrants’ advantage in cancer mortality remained constant and decreased with increasing length of residence in the host country.

Conclusions This study provided novel evidence on the ‘healthy immigrant paradox’, associated with the fact that migrants are favorably selected at origin, cultural patterns of the societies of origin and, in the case of men, there is some convergence or an ‘unhealthy’ integration that explains the fact that this advantage over natives is lost with more years of residence in Spain.