Arbeitsbereich

Bevölkerung und Gesundheit

Auf einen Blick Projekte Publikationen Team

Projekt

Health Inequalities in Immigrants: Burden of Multimorbidity (Dissertation)

Su Yeon Jang (MPIDR / Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, Niederlande), Mikko Myrskylä, Silvia Loi, Anna Oksuzyan (MPIDR / Bielefeld University, Deutschland), Frank J. van Lenthe (Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, Niederlande)

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Immigrants face particularly high risks of unhealthy aging. It is well known that older people have a higher prevalence of several chronic diseases than younger people. The probability of developing multimorbidity (defined as having multiple chronic health conditions at the same time) thus tends to increase with age. This PhD project studies the aging of immigrants over their stays in the receiving countries, focusing on the health outcome measure of multimorbidity and the social contexts (at the micro and the macro level) that play important roles in modifying changes to their health.

The PhD project has several subprojects in order to give a multilateral view of immigrant multimorbidity, and of how it differs from multimorbidity in the native population. The project addresses several research questions:

1. How do disease patterns of multimorbidity differ between immigrants and natives? We capture the patterns of multimorbidity in immigrants relative to those in the native population, focusing on chronic disease combinations that are prevalent in the two populations.
2. Does aging affect health differently in immigrants and in natives? We determine disparities between immigrants and natives in their age-related trajectories of developing chronic diseases, and we examine variations in immigrant-native differentials depending on the origin and the receiving country. The goal is to capture the differences from a structural perspective.
3. How is an immigrant’s health trajectory affected by his or her living arrangement? We address the immigrant-native disparities in multimorbidity at the individual level, focusing on living arrangements. We hypothesize that the rate of decline in health is steeper in immigrants because the number of single households in this population is higher, leading to limited family ties.
4. How does the onset of chronic conditions differ between immigrants and natives? The subproject examines how the sequence of the development of chronic health conditions up until death varies between immigrants and natives. Our hypothesis is that immigrants experience the onset of the first major chronic conditions at younger ages and become multimorbid over shorter time intervals relative to native-born individuals.

We draw on several longitudinal surveys, including the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and the US Health and Retirement Survey, which allow us to analyze the health status and socioeconomic features of older individuals in nationally representative samples.

Publikationen

Jang, S. Y.; van Lenthe, F. J.; Myrskylä, M.; Oksuzyan, A.; Loi, S.; Bopp, M.; Brønnum-Hansen, H.; Deboosere, P.; Kalėdienė, R.; Leinsalu, M.; Martikainen, P.; Östergren, O. M.; Psihoda, S.; Regidor, E.; Zengarini, N.; Nusselder, W. J.:

Socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy within and between native-born and foreign-born populations: a comparative study of 10 European countries

International Journal of Epidemiology 55:3, 1–10. (2026)    

Jang, S. Y.; Loi, S.; van Lenthe, F. J.; Oksuzyan, A.; Myrskylä, M.:

Inequalities in multimorbidity between native-born and immigrant older adults across Europe

European Journal of Ageing 22:1, 1–15. (2025)    

Jang, S. Y.; Oksuzyan, A.; van Lenthe, F. J.; Myrskylä, M.; Loi, S.:

Living arrangements and chronic disease accumulation among native-born and immigrant older adults in Europe

Social Science and Medicine 373:117954, 1–10. (2025)    

Jang, S. Y.; Loi, S.; van Lenthe, F. J.; Oksuzyan, A.; Myrskylä, M.:

Inequalities in multimorbidity between older migrants and natives across Europe

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2024-003. (2024)    

Jang, S. Y.; Oksuzyan, A.; van Lenthe, F. J.; Myrskylä, M.; Loi, S.:

Living arrangements and chronic disease accumulation among native-born and immigrant older adults in Europe

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2024-032. (2024)    

Jang, S. Y.; Myrskylä, M.; van Lenthe, F. J.; Loi, S.; Oksuzyan, A.:

Living arrangements and the speed of chronic disease accumulation among older migrants and natives

European Journal of Public Health 33:Suppl. 2, ii134–ii134. (2023)    

Jang, S. Y.; Oksuzyan, A.; Myrskylä, M.; van Lenthe, F. J.; Loi, S.:

Healthy immigrants, unhealthy ageing? Analysis of health decline among older migrants and natives across European countries

SSM-Population Health 23:101478, 1–11. (2023)    

Jang, S. Y.; Oksuzyan, A.; Myrskylä, M.; van Lenthe, F. J.; Loi, S.:

Healthy immigrants, unhealthy ageing? Analysis of health decline among older migrants and natives across European countries

MPIDR Working Paper WP-2023-024. (2023)    

Jang, S. Y.; Oksuzyan, A.; van Lenthe, F. J.; Loi, S.; Myrskylä, M.:

Multimorbidity patterns in older migrants and natives across Europe

European Journal of Public Health 33:Suppl. 2, ii314–ii314. (2023)