Latinos are healthier than Anglos
Confounding all expectations for a low-income, low-education population, Latinos have far lower death rates than non-Latino whites in each of those top categories.
Latinos are about 25% lower for heart diseases, 35% lower for cancer and 15% lower for stroke. When you study all causes of death in 2004, the Latino age-adjusted rate of 557.1 deaths per 100,000 people was 25% lower than the non-Latino white rate of 743.1. (The only major exception to this pattern is diabetes, a far rarer event than heart, cancer or stroke deaths). In all, Latinos have nearly a five-year-longer life expectancy compared with non-Latino whites.
Latinos manage to do this, year after year, while seeing doctors far less than whites do, and utilizing hospitals far less as well. This is seen clearly in the case of infant mortality. In spite of receiving less prenatal care and receiving it later in the pregnancy, Latinos have an infant mortality rate that is equal to non-Latino whites.
By the way, what is it that Latinos are doing that reduces their risk for heart disease, cancer and stroke? We don’t fully know. But data from the birth certificates offer a clue. Latinas giving birth in California are far less likely, compared to non-Latino white mothers, to drink, smoke, use drugs or have a sexually transmitted disease. Any doctor will tell you that if you are pregnant, you shouldn’t smoke, drink or do drugs.
But Latinas don’t learn these behaviors from the doctor — they learn them from their participation in the state’s ongoing Latino culture, which has been influencing Latino lives for nearly 240 years, ever since Latinos first arrived in California in 1769. Interestingly, as Latinas loosen their participation in Latino social life and become more assimilated into the American mainstream, their rates of smoking, drinking, drug use and sexually transmitted disease also increase, approximating non-Latino white levels.
Go to original by David E. Hayes-Bautista, Los Angeles Times
