Ethnic Density, Immigrant Enclaves, and Latino Health Risks: A Propensity Score Matching Approach

This study aims to distinguish the effect of residential isolation from the effect of immigrant concentration in predicting health among the Latino population, the largest and the fastly growing minority group in the United States. It asks the following two research questions: (1) Are Latino ethnic density and immigrant concentration positively or negatively associated with them having high blood pressure and high cholesterol level? (2) Are these associations robust after taking into account neighborhood selection bias? Pooled data from the 2006 and 2008 Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Survey (N=1,563) were linked to census-tract profiles obtained from 2005-2009 American Community Survey. Results from both multilevel models and propensity score matching analyses suggested that neighborhood Latino density did have impact on Latino adults' health risks over and above individual risk factors, while the observed effect of immigrant concentration were likely due to selection bias as a result of residential preference. This study contributed to the literature by theorizing racial/ethnic isolation and immigrant concentration as two distinct residential patterns that may have divergent implications on minority health while directly addressing sample selection bias in observational studies.