Second-Generation Decline: Disparities in Cardiovascular Disease Between African Americans and Afro Caribbeans

ABSTRACT

Studies show that Black immigrants have better cardiovascular health than African Americans, but few have explored the reasons for these disparities. While we know that the cardiovascular health of Black immigrants worsens over time in the United States, much less is known about the relative cardiovascular health of second-generation Black immigrants. We draw on novel data from the only nationally representative survey of African Americans and Afro Caribbeans to assess these cardiovascular disparities and the relative contribution of differences in psychosocial stress, discrimination, and health behavior. After developing an index measure of cardiovascular disease, we show that second-generation Afro Caribbeans have the worst outcomes, followed by African Americans, Afro Caribbeans who have been in the country for more than 15 years, and those who have been in the country for less than 15 years. We find little support for the role of psychosocial stress, discrimination, and health behavior in these cardiovascular disparities, including the fact that the second generation has the poorest cardiovascular health.

KEYWORDS:

• African Americans
• black immigrants
• cardiovascular disease
• discrimination
• health behavior

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mosi Adesina Ifatunji

Mosi Adesina Ifatunji is an assistant professor in the Departments of African American Studies and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests are in racial and ethnic theory and the methodologies used to study inequality and stratification, especially in theorizing how non-phenomic characteristics contribute to racial classification and stratification. To this end, his studies focus on how African Americans and Black immigrants are racialized differently in the United States.

Yanica F. Faustin

Yanica F. Faustin is an assistant professor at Elon University. She received her PhD from the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health where she also minored in sociology, her MPH in Community Health Education from UNC-Greensboro, and her BA in Biology and Ethical Genetics from Colby College. Dr. Faustin is Haitian-American and from Brooklyn. Her research interests are largely shaped by her diasporic upbringing in a majority-minority and immigrant neighborhood. Dr. Faustin’s research investigates the relationship between nativity, racism, and maternal/infant health outcomes.

Deshira D. Wallace

Deshira Wallace PhD, MSPH, is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Department of Health Behavior. Dr. Wallace’s research expertise is on psychosocial stress and structural stressors and their effects on chronic disease prevention and management. Further, Dr. Wallace explores the role of racialization among U.S. Latinos and in Latin America as a site of differential risk and protective factors that impact health, with a particular lens toward Afro-descendants across the region.