Health Expenditure Dynamics and Years of U.S. Residence: Analyzing Spending Disparities Among Latinos by Citizenship/Nativity Status (Health Services Research)

​Latino immigrants spend less on health care than Latinos who are naturalized or U.S.-born and whites but the gap starts to narrow as assimilation occurs. Those are the results of the first study examining health care spending among Latinos by length of U.S. residence and citizenship/nativity status. The study is published in the April issue of Health Services Research. According to research led by Arturo Vargas-Bustamante in Health Services Research, a Center faculty associate and a UCLA assistant professor of health services, and Jie Chen, an assistant professor with the City University of New York, foreign-born Latinos spend less because the healthiest Latinos tend to immigrate to the United States and there is an unfamiliarity with the nation's health care system. Spending patterns among Latino immigrants converge to those of U.S.-born Latinos and whites the longer immigrants live in the country, which suggests successful integration, researchers noted.​

• Arturo Vargas Bustamante, PhD, MPP, MA