Immigrants' Increasing Depression Disadvantage in Older Ages: Patterns and Mechanisms

Despite evidence of immigrants' mental health advantage over natives, it remains unclear how this advantage evolves over the life course and what mechanisms underlie it. Using 28 years of longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (1992-2020), this study shows that immigrants report lower levels of depression than natives in their 50s; however, this advantage declines with age and reverses around the mid-60s, when immigrants exhibit higher levels of depression. The pattern holds across ethnoracial and gender groups. Analyses of premigration and postmigration factors suggest that childhood environments-such as trauma, family structure, parental warmth, and financial conditions-play little role. Instead, vulnerability to joblessness and financial insecurity, discrimination, reduced social support, and neighborhood alienation account for about 80% of immigrants' steeper increase in depression. Notably, the erosion of immigrants' mental health advantage appears unrelated to their declining physical health advantage, indicating distinct mechanisms behind these trajectories.