Often when opponents of immigration outline their reasons, they tend to revolve around concerns that new arrivals will stretch access to crucial services, such as healthcare, which will have a detrimental effect on their lives.

A recent study from Princeton suggests those fears are overblown.  Indeed, the researchers found that immigrants often increase the lifespan of their adopted homeland.  The authors highlight that if immigrants in the United States were their own country, they would not only be amongst the world leaders in terms of life expectancy, but also they increase the American life expectancy by up to 1.5 years.

“Demographers knew that immigrants lived longer. The main question that we set out to answer was, ‘How much is this really contributing to national life expectancy trends?’” the researchers say. “Our results show that they’re making an outsized contribution to national life expectancy.”

Life expectancy

The study found that immigrants were responsible for around half of the gains made in American life expectancy in recent years, but the gap between foreign-born and native-born people is widening.

Indeed, if immigrants were not around, the authors argue that US life expectancy would have fallen back to levels last seen in 2003, or to a level equivalent to that found in countries like Ecuador and Tunisia.

“If it weren’t for immigrants, our national life expectancy stagnation that we experienced since 2010 would instead be a national decline in life expectancy,” the researchers say. “For them to have that large an impact is unexpected because they represent a relatively small proportion of the U.S. population.”

Diverging outcomes

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the research is the diverging health outcomes of immigrants and American-born people, which was already present in 1990 but had almost doubled by 2017.

“When compared to immigrants’ life expectancy, the U.S.-born are doing poorly.  Much of this is related to their very high mortality at the prime adult ages,” the researchers explain. “Low mortality among prime-aged immigrants doesn’t just help the foreign-born — it helps the U.S.-born too. Prime-aged adults are likely to be in the labor force and raising children. This means that they contribute to higher tax revenues and slower population aging.”

This is particularly important today, as it’s those people of working age that are losing the most years of life, due in large part to preventable causes of death, such as drug abuse.  The results suggest that there is clearly a lot of potential to thrive in the country, but that while immigrants are capitalizing on that opportunity, native citizens are not.

“Immigrants tend to be healthier in part due to the selective migration of those who have the health, resources and stamina to migrate to the U.S., and this selectivity may have grown stronger,” the researchers continue.

Immigrants are also less likely to smoke, drink, and use drugs than their American peers, which the researchers believe partly explains their strong life expectancy, even though many may come from poorer countries.

“Many of America’s immigrants come from lower-income, less-developed nations, leading some to worry that these immigrants bring their home countries’ high-mortality conditions with them and thus drag down America’s national average longevity,” the researchers conclude. “But the results say just the opposite. Far from dragging down the national average, immigrants are bolstering American life expectancy. A big part of the story appears to be that immigrants take fewer risks when it comes to their health.”