NBC News Asian America reports that US-Born Asian Americans no longer the Healthiest Older Americans, as was found in previous surveys. This study published in the Journals of Gerontology that the article cites focuses on adults over the age of 50. Says study author Leafia Ye:
“This study shows that the ‘model minority’ stereotype is wrong about the overall experience of U.S.-born older Asians in terms of health,”
Some doctors think that Asian Americans do not get certain diseases and are generally healthier. In this story, an Asian American woman’s doctor did not believe that she could have breast cancer because “Asian women don’t get breast cancer.” As I mentioned in that article, we know a number of Asian American women who have gotten breast cancer.
Ye and her co-author Hui Zheng found that older US-Born Asian Americans disability rates did not improve compared to all other ethnic groupings. These other groups, including Blacks and Hispanics, improved over between 2005 and 2022. Between 2005 and 2009, US-Born Asians had lower disability rates compared to other ethnic groups. The study also looked at disaggregated Asian American data. They found that Chinese and Japanese Americans had lower disability rates than other Asian subgroups, but the pattern for US-Born Asian Americans no longer the healthiest continued.
The study concludes that a factor is the decline in socioeconomic status amount older Asians. Older White Americans are now the healthiest, least disabled older American group. The paper defines disability as any condition, physical or mental, that makes it difficult for a person to care of themselves or to live independently.
There is more detail in the NBC News article and the actual published study. Ye and Zheng looked at whether the pandemic and anti-Asian sentiment was a factor. Check out their paper for the answer to that question.
