Objective: The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to investigate the correlates of health status of immigrant women in comparison with native counterparts.
Method: We conducted a questionnaire survey on the health status of the married women with children aged 0-6 years, who lived in a township of Nantou County in middle Taiwan. The information collected by trained interviewers administering face-to-face interviewers with women, when they participated in health examinations provided by the local health center from Nov. 2008 to Jan. 2009. With the obtainment of informed consents, the subjects consisted of 43 native and 39 immigrant women. The Short Form-36 Scale was used to measure health status and multiple regression analysis were used to examine the final results.
Result: We found immigrant women were on average healthier than their native counterparts (P=0.003) and the healthiest ones were from China. The significance of this difference disappeared when other possible correlates of
health status were considered. These correlates included the age gap with their husbands, income, the numbers of male to female children, with/without diagnosed diseases, children with/without developmental delay and their perceived stress. Our final results showed that women with more numbers of girls than boys, with children having developmental delay and with higher perceived stress had worse health status. For native women, the significant
correlate was perceived stress but for immigrant women the correlates, in addition to perceived stress, also included the more female than male children numbers of boys to girls.
Conclusion: The social and psychological factors of more female children than male, children with developmental delay and perceived stress affected women’s health status for those with pre-school children no matter whether
they were native born or immigrant. These findings suggest that the social education on sexual equality in the public and the efforts on more comprehensive support systems for women with children of developmental delays are in need.
