At the Intersection of Adverse Life Course Pathways: The Effects on Health and Wellbeing by Nativity

Silvia Loi , Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Peng Li, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Mikko Myrskylä, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Adverse life events are a major cause of declining health and wellbeing, but the effects are not the same across subpopulations. We analyze how the intersection of nativity and two main adverse life events, job loss and divorce, affect the individual health and wellbeing trajectories, with a gender perspective. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984-2017), a survey representative of the native and immigrant population in Germany. We apply fixed effects models to estimate the main effects of job loss and divorce on two health outcomes, general health and satisfaction with own health, and on wellbeing. Our results support the hypothesis of the intersectional effect of disadvantage and adversities on health and wellbeing, with immigrants suffering more from job loss and divorce than natives. We show how the long-term effects of job loss on health and wellbeing are more detrimental to immigrants than natives. Additionally, we find an intersectional effect of job loss, prior divorce and nativity on the health and wellbeing trajectories. These results are the first to give evidence on the effects of different adverse life events intersecting with each other and with nativity, and highlight the importance of intersectional analyses in the research on immigrant health.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 30. Health, Wellbeing and Morbidity