The health impacts of international migration on Mexican women

Abstract

Mexican migration to the USA is a phenomenon that affects a significant number of Mexican households. In the area of health, considerable research has been devoted to international migrants, but less is known about the health impacts of migration on other household members, particularly the wives of migrants. I used data from the Mexican Migration Project to investigate the health impacts of having a migrant husband. As part of my analysis I explored the relationship between the husbands’ migration and several health conditions and behaviours among the wives. In contrast to existing research on the subject, I also considered whether the amount of time the husband spent in the US mediates the relationship between migration and health. Finally, I addressed the possibility that the wives of migrants differ in their initial health endowments from the wives of non-migrants. I found that despite having similar initial health endowments, the wives of migrants have poorer mental health, a higher prevalence of heart disease, and they are more likely to be obese or overweight than the wives of non-migrants.

Keywords:

• health impacts
• international migration
• wife/spouse
• Mexico

Acknowledgements

This research uses data from the Mexican Migration Project which is funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01-HD25643). The author is grateful to Noreen Goldman, Doug Massey, and Burt Singer for helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. Ullmann (2011) includes an analysis of women whose husbands migrated to the USA and returned to Mexico before the union began.

2. Questions on diseases and health conditions in the MMP asked, Usted ha padecido de … (‘Have you suffered from …’) without a specific timeframe.

3. I also used the categorical specification of SRH in ordered logit models to assess the robustness of my findings (results not shown).