Language of Interview and the Subjectively-Rated Health of Hispanic Mothers and their Children

Abstract

Hispanics tend to be as healthy as non-Hispanic whites across a number of indicators, yet they consistently rate their health as worse than non-Hispanic whites. This incongruous finding has been tied both to levels of acculturation and Spanish-language use, questioning the validity of self-reported health for Spanish speakers in the United States. Furthermore, in the same way that Hispanic adults interviewed in Spanish have worse self-rated health, when asked in Spanish mothers rate their children’s health as worse than those mothers who answer in English. The exact reasons for this relationship, though, are unclear. Frequently this language effect has been taken as an indicator of acculturation; as such, the assumption is that as time progresses Hispanics become more acculturated and answer questions regarding their health more similarly to non-Hispanic whites. However, up until this point there has been no longitudinal research examining the relationship between rated health and language of interview. Using three waves of data on Hispanic mothers and their children from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study, this paper addresses the following questions: 1. Is Spanish language interview predictive of worse rated health for both mothers and children, and do these relationships change over time? 2. Does the effect of language on rated health persist after controlling for potential mediators? By employing two-level generalized linear models, we find that on average, those who were interviewed in Spanish are more likely to rate their and their children’s health as worse than those who answered in English. The effect of language of interview on reported health persists over time, even after controlling for measures of acculturation, physical and mental health, and access to health care. Contrary to what some have proposed, we see no discernable change over time in the way women rate their own health or that of their children.