Advisory Committee Chair
Elizabeth Baker
Advisory Committee Members
Joseph Wolfe
Andrea Cherrington
Gabe Miller
Magdalena Szaflarski
Verna Keith
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
1-1-2025
Degree Name by School
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) College of Arts and Sciences
Abstract
Prior research in immigrant health has often documented the “immigrant advantage” where first-generation immigrants tend to exhibit better health outcomes than their U.S.-born counterparts. However, this advantage declines across generations, prompting scholars to call for more nuanced examinations of the social processes shaping this generational health gradient. One such process is skin color stratification, a key but often overlooked dimension of inequality in the United States. While race and ethnicity are commonly used in health research, they often overlook within-group heterogeneity, particularly in relation to phenotypic characteristics such as skin tone. Although skin color can shape immigrants’ and their descendants’ health trajectories by influencing exposure to discrimination, access to resources, and social mobility, few studies have examined how skin tone contributes to health disparities by immigrant generation and across the life course. To address these gaps, I use data from four waves (1997, 2000, 2017, and 2019) of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) reflecting key life stages – adolescence and mid-adulthood. Using Ordinary Least Squares regression, I examine how the relationship between skin color and two health outcomes – body mass index (BMI) and poor mental health- differs by immigrant generation and gender. Overall, I find that skin color is significantly associated with both physical (measured by BMI) and mental health, though in distinct ways. In both adolescence and adulthood, darker skin is associated with higher BMI scores, with the strongest effects observed among second-generation immigrants in adolescence. In contrast, mental health findings reveal that medium- and dark-skinned individuals report better mental health than their light-skinned counterparts, with the generational moderation effect again most prominent in adolescence and among second-generation immigrants. By adulthood, skin color independently predicts mental health, regardless of immigrant generation. Notably, gender also moderates the relationship between skin color and health, with this effect strongest for women. These findings highlight the importance of considering skin tone and generational status as central axes of health stratification. Immigrant health research and policy must move beyond broad racial/ethnic categories to account for the within-group disparities that shape health trajectories across the life course.
Recommended Citation
Emoruwa, Oluwaseun Temitope, "Shades Of Health: Examining The Relationship Between Skin Color And Mental And Physical Health Across Immigrant Generations" (2025). All ETDs from UAB. 6833.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/etd-collection/6833
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