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We use data from three rounds of the Mexican Family Life Survey to examine whether migrants in the United States returning to Mexico in the period 2005-2012 have worse health than those remaining in the United States. Despite extensive interest by demographers in health-related selection, this has been a neglected area of study in the literature on U.S.-Mexico migration, and the few results to date have been contradictory and inconclusive. Using five self-reported health variables collected while migrants resided in the United States and subsequent migration history, we find direct evidence of higher probabilities of return migration for Mexican migrants in poor health as well as lower probabilities of return for migrants with improving health. These findings are robust to the inclusion of potential confounders reflecting the migrants' demographic characteristics, economic situation, family ties, and origin and destination characteristics. We anticipate that in the coming decade, health may become an even more salient issue in migrants' decisions about returning to Mexico, given the recent expansion in access to health insurance in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many studies have attempted to examine the consequences of Mexico-U.S. migration for Mexican immigrants' health, few have had adequate data to generate the appropriate comparisons. In this article, we use data from two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS) to compare the health of current migrants from Mexico with those of earlier migrants and nonmigrants. Because the longitudinal data permit us to examine short-term changes in health status subsequent to the baseline survey for current migrants and for Mexican residents, as well as to control for the potential health selectivity of migrants, the results provide a clearer picture of the consequences of immigration for Mexican migrant health than have previous studies. Our findings demonstrate that current migrants are more likely to experience recent changes in health status-both improvements and declines-than either earlier migrants or nonmigrants. The net effect, however, is a decline in health for current migrants: compared with never migrants, the health of current migrants is much more likely to have declined in the year or two since migration and not significantly more likely to have improved. Thus, it appears that the migration process itself and/or the experiences of the immediate post-migration period detrimentally affect Mexican immigrants' health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The allostatic load framework postulates that an important pathway connecting the social environment with health involves biological responses to stressful stimuli and the subsequent dysregulation of interrelated physiological systems. We formulate a new measure for cumulative physiological dysregulation using a grade of membership model estimated with biodemographic data from a national sample of older Taiwanese persons. We investigate associations between the measure and physical, psychological, and cognitive function. The results provide insights into the relationships between a set of biological profiles and various health outcomes, identify limitations of earlier approaches, and underscore next steps in the development of improved for mulations of physiological dysregulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on family choices about pregnancy-related care, and the use of childhood immunization in Guatemala. In Guatemala, as in many countries, the public and the private sectors developed alongside and generally in isolation from several other preexisting medical belief and treatment systems. Although the use of government health services and private formal practitioners appears to have grown over the past two decades, the use of formal medical services is still low relative to other Latin American countries, and traditional providers remain a common source of treatment. Guatemalan families typically are poor and have limited access to health services. Among the family's social and economic characteristics, the respondent's education is related most consistently to use of prenatal care, delivery assistance, and immunization. More highly educated women are both more likely to use any kind of care and more likely to use formal care and to have their children immunized completely. Mothers who have worked outside the household are also more likely to use formal delivery care and to have their children immunized fully. The effects of the husband's characteristics are mostly consistent with hypothesized relationships. In particular, women whose husbands completed at least some secondary school are much more likely than others to seek formal pre-natal and delivery care, and their children are more likely to have received at least some immunizations.