Young adults with immigrant parents are diagnosed less often with physical health conditions than their peers with Norwegian-born parents.
Young adults born to immigrant parents in Norway generally have fewer diagnoses from specialist health care than their peers with Norwegian-born parents, finds a new public health study.
This is especially the case for those with two immigrant parents or an immigrant mother and Norwegian-born father.
Meanwhile, if the mother is Norwegian-born and the father an immigrant, young people are slightly more likely to be diagnosed with physical health conditions.
Do these findings reflect better health in young people with immigrant parents? Or are other factors at play?
“Although we cannot rule out better health among youth with immigrant parents, the findings indicate that this group underutilize health care services,” says professor Marte Kjøllesdal from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
“Youth with immigrant parents may experience barriers to health care. Although they have no linguistic barriers and can seek health care without help from their parents, parental immigrant background may impact their children’s use of services, both indirectly through perceptions of health, disease and health care seeking behaviour - as well as directly through practical help or through low health literacy during the upbringing.”
The team analysed health data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway and Statistics Norway for over 1.5 million individuals aged 16–30. They focused on 37 categories of physical health conditions diagnosed between 2008 and 2022.
Place of origin matters
The likelihood of diagnoses varied depending on the specific region of origin of parents.
Children of parents from Asia and Africa generally had a lower rate of diagnoses for medical and neurological conditions. Those with parents from Africa, on the other hand, had a higher rate of being diagnosed with certain infectious diseases.
When the researchers accounted for parental education and how long parents had lived in Norway, the differences in health risks between groups became less pronounced.
This suggests that socioeconomic factors and familiarity with the health care system play a significant role.
“This underscores that immigrants and their children are a very diverse group, with differences in living conditions, health and health care use,” says Kjøllesdal.
Healthy Immigrant Effect?
According to public health science, a phenomenon is observed in many countries referred to as the healthy immigrant effect:
Immigrants often arrive in better health than the native-born population, despite facing challenges such as lower income or education. This might be partly because healthier individuals are more likely to migrate.
This health advantage tends to fade over time, however, due to stress, discrimination, or adopting less healthy habits, and is not likely to be transferred to the next generation.
Interestingly, younger children (0–10 years old) with immigrant parents have previously been found to have higher incidence of some conditions compared to those with Norwegian-born parents. This trend seems to reverse in young adulthood, as seen here. The use of healthcare converges, it seems, as the children mature.
The researchers compared their findings to studies carried out in other Nordic countries.
Also in Finland, young adults with an immigrant father (but not an immigrant mother) have a slightly higher likelihood of receiving physical health diagnoses than their native-born peers.
In Denmark, however, no significant differences between those with immigrant parents and those with native-born parents are observed.
“Our study clearly shows that youth with immigrant parents are less likely than their peers to be diagnosed for a physical health condition in specialist health care, indicating barriers to health care in this group. It cannot, however, specify the barriers that this group experiences. We really need further research to understand the full picture and make recommendations,” concludes Kjøllesdal.
The study was conducted by the Department of Public Health Science, Norwegian University of Life Sciences & the Norwegian Institute of Public Health