A new study finds that the children of immigrants tend to be healthier than the children of American-born parents. But that the longer children are in the US, the more likely their health is to deteriorate. The report is entitled "From Generation to Generation: The Health and Well-Being of Children in Immigrant Families" and has been issued by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine. It is available online at http://www.nap.edu/bookstore/isbn/0309065615.html.

The report's panel members attributed this finding to a basic factor - these children tend to assimilate and their American-born counterparts have poorer diets. The study is very important because one in five children under eighteen years of age has immigrant parents.

The study showed that the longer immigrant children remain in the US, the greater percentage of the diet consists of processed foods instead of fruits, grains and vegetables. The researchers also suppose that immigrants tend to be a self-selected heartier stock since they have been willing to take the risk of moving to a new country.

Children of immigrants experience fewer short-term and long-term health problems and have a smaller number of accidents than children of US-born parents. Immigrant mothers are more likely to have children of a healthier birth weight and the infant mortality rate in these families is lower (a surprising result considering the fact that immigrant women often have a lesser level of access to prenatal health care). Also, teenage children of immigrants have fewer mental problems and are less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol, become pregnant or become juvenile delinquents.

But the longer these children are in the US, the more likely they are to have the same problems of other American children. This is especially true for children of Mexican, El Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, Haitian, Honduran, Dominican, Cabodian, Laotian, Thai, Vietnamese and Russian parents.

In another study also just released, Mexican immigrants were found to have only about 50% as many psychiatric disorders as US-born Mexican Americans. The authors of the study believe the findings run contrary to the conventional wisdom that migration causes damaging psychological problems. The study was reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry.