Immigrant Kids’ Health Suffers in U.S., Study Finds

Despite generally higher poverty rates, children in immigrant families tend to be healthier than those of U.S.-born parents, but the immigrant children’s health deteriorates the longer they remain in the United States and assimilate into American life, a national study released Wednesday said.

The 271-page report, by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, analyzed parental surveys and a wide variety of other health and social statistics to reach its conclusions. Reasons for the deteriorating health of the children were not fully clear, but study panelists and outside sociologists attributed the decline to negative assimilation in which, over time, subsequent generations abandon the relatively healthy diets, discipline and protective family structures that their families possessed on arrival.

“The ‘McDonaldization’ of the world is not necessarily progress when it comes to nutritious diets,” said Ruben Rumbaut, a sociologist whose work was cited in the study.

Children who are immigrants themselves or have immigrant parents total 14 million across the country, accounting for 20% of people younger than 18, and making up the fastest-growing segment of the youth population.