One of the first studies to aggregate data about the life expectancy of Asian Americans found a wide gap between various Asian groups, reported the Vanderbilt Hustler.
“There were significant differences in life expectancy at birth between the six largest Asian groups: Chinese, Asian Indians, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Japanese,” Vanderbilt doctoral student Darwin Baluran said to Hustler. “Chinese, at the national level, had the longest life expectancy, and the Vietnamese had the lowest life expectancy.”
Chinese men live an average of 86.8 years. Chinese women in the United States lived an average of 91.3, followed by Asian Indians, Koreans, Japanese, Filipinos, and Vietnamese, according to the study published on Duke Press.
Baluran discovered differences in people’s health based on socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and geographic location.
The study also found life expectancy for Asians in the west significantly lower than life expectancy in other regions.
According to Hustler, the study concluded the longer immigrants spent in the United States, the more their health deteriorated.
“When people come to the United States, they are positively selected, so people coming here are usually younger and healthier,” Baluran said. “What researchers found is that the longer people [immigrants] stay in the U.S., their health begins to deteriorate; by the time [they] reach the second and third generation, the health advantage that immigrants have almost disappeared.”
He believes this is the first study to investigate the mortality of disaggregated Asian groups at a subnational level.
“We do a disservice to marginalized communities by homogenizing them under these broad categories and erasing the issues that they face,” Baluran said in a statement released through Vanderbilt. “This is very important to think about because by clumping groups together, some groups will lose representation in the data.”
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