Is There a Gender Gap in Health among Migrants in Russia?

Abstract

AbstractThis study investigates whether there is a gender gap in health among migrants. Focusing on migrants from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in Russia, where there are high levels of both immigration and gender inequality, this paper exploits unique data collected by the authors recording detailed information on health and migration trajectories. We find that migrant women are on average in poorer health than migrant men. This gender gap is only partly explained by gender differences in observed socioeconomic, demographic, living and working characteristics and differences in pre-migration health. We show that migrant women’s health is more likely than men’s to deteriorate during migration. This women’s health disadvantage is sensitive to the migration profile, as it only appears after a certain time spent migrating and for migrants with a vulnerable legal status. These results call for targeted public health policies to address this gender health gap.Keywords: Health disparitiesmigrationgenderRussia CentralAsiaJEL CODES: F22I12I14J16 AcknowledgmentsWe are very grateful to all the members of REFPoM project who had a meaningful role at each step of the process (J. Cleuziou, C. Marteau d’Autry, C. Doutement, L. Direnberger and A. Zevaco). We are also very thankful to V. Mukomel and E. Kasimskaya for their precious advises in the field. We are very grateful to M. Guillot and M. Khlat for their postdoctoral support and their meaningful insights on migrant health issues. We thank all the discussants and the participants to the seminars where we had the chance to present this article despite the sanitary situation. In particular, we are very grateful to T. Barnay, M. Ben Salem, S. Juin and Y. Videau (ERUDITE seminar), to F. Jusot, L. Goldzhal and D. Mignon (LEDa-LEGOS seminar), to M. Leturq, E. Cambois, M. Segù, G. Duthé and Sophie Le Coeur (INED), to I. Chort (TREE seminar), to I. Ohayon and J. Thorez (EHESS seminar on Central Asia) and all other participants. We also thank the participants of the 2021 International Conference in Development Economics, the 37th Applied Microeconomics Days, the 69th Congress of the French Economic Association, the Population Association of America 2021 Annual Meeting and the Women on the Move workshop for their useful feedback. We thank the French Collaborative Institute on Migration for the fellowship and the members of the DYNAMICS department for the inspirational research discussions. Finally, we are very grateful to the referees for their precious comments that helped to significantly improve the quality and clarity of the article. An older version of this manuscript were deposited on an academic website as a preprint for non-commercial purposes.Footnote13Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability statementIn accordance with the editorial policy we are making available to the readers the programs that gave rise to the following results, which can be found online in the Supplementary Materials. In addition, the data we have collected can be made available to researchers interested in the subject, upon motivated request and after agreement of the whole REFPoM research team.Notes1 These rare and rich studies present however some limitations about our research question. They focus on Central Asian women without comparing them with men. Also, they are generally based on ethnocultural perspective and use ethnicity as an identification variable. This paper investigates the migration experience of foreigners born abroad, using citizenship criteria.2 Job sectors such as care are less remunerating than male-oriented sectors such as construction.3 This survey was part of a larger project, the REFPoM project (Rituels et Economie Funéraires Postsocialistes en contexte Migratoire), funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR). More details can be found on REFPoM site https://refpom.hypotheses.org/.4 Due to sample size, we could suspect statistical power limitation, thus we computed the minimum detectable effect of gender for each outcome: the estimated differences are high enough to let us conclude. See section C in the online Supplementary Materials.5 We distinguish four degrees of legal status: very vulnerable, vulnerable, more secure and very secure. See section D in Supplementary Materials for more details.6 See Tables S.M7 and S.M8 in the online Supplementary Materials for more details on the construction of working condition index.7 The coefficients associated with the different factors are indexed by the period (O or T) to allow characteristics to have a different impact on health depending on whether the individual is in the country of origin or Russia. For instance, gender does not necessarily have the same impact since norms and culture between the two countries are likely to differ.8 Ideally, we would like to observe all time-varying independent variables before and during migration. However, as we rely on cross-sectional rather than longitudinal data, only some characteristics before migration are reported using retrospective questions.9 The sample is reduced to migrants who were working at the time of the survey (93% of the sample) or who were not currently working but had worked in Russia in the past (6%, among them 75% who had been unemployed for four months or less).10 At this stage, we loose 79 observations due to difficulties in declaring earnings.11 We also estimate a model where gender and working conditions are interacted and find that the health gender gap is not sensitive to working conditions. Whatever the degree of difficulty, women have a disadvantage for the three first outcomes. However, for illness within the past six months, only women working in worse conditions are more likely to get sick (Table S.M15 in the online Supplementary Materials).12 Taking the date of an economic downturn is an easy way to divide into two different groups those who had potentially different conditions of departure and stay. We chose the 2014 downturn instead of the 2008, first to have more individuals in the sub-sample - they were fewer who arrived before 2008 - but also because the 2014-2015 crisis was very dramatic in Russia and led to a large decline in remittances (Figure S.M3 in the online Supplementary Materials).13 Pellet, S., and de Talancé, M. (2021). “Is there a gender gap in health among migrants in Russia?”. Érudite laboratoire d’économie Paris-Est. https://ideas.repec.org/s/eru/erudwp.htmlAdditional informationFundingWe acknowledge the French National Agency of Research for financing REFPoM project (Rituels et Economie Funéraires Postsocialistes en contexte Migratoire, ANR-17-CE41-0003) and our respective laboratories and research units (Nanterre University, Université Gustave Eiffel, Université Paris-Est Créteil and INED) for their substantial material, financial and logistic help.