The effect of partners' ethnicity on the health of Filipinas in Australia

Women from the Philippines constitute one of the largest groups of female i mmigrants from Asia to Australia. One-third of these immigrants migrate to marry or join Australian husbands, and they are the largest group immigrati ng to Australia for these reasons. Social, physical and environmental facto rs, health status, and health service utilization were compared for Filipin as married to men born in Australia (FMA) and Filipinas married to men born in the Philippines (FMF), in order to explore the effect of marriage partn er's background on acculturation, stress and mental health. It was hypothes ized that: (1) Settlement-related life events such as moving house and changing jobs a re likely to be more common among FMF than FMA because of less well-establi shed networks in Australia. (2) FMA are likely to have better English language skills than FMF because of their increased exposure to Australian culture. (3) If FMF are disadvantaged in terms of acculturation their mental health outcomes should be worse than FMA. (4) Health differences between FMA and FMF will largely be due to differenc es in acculturation. FMA had greater English language proficiency than FMF. FMF were more likely to have moved house and experience difficulty or problems at work. FMF wer e more likely than FMA to experience problems handling daily tasks, stress, or other mental health problems, and have problems getting to a doctor at their last visit. Only differences in stress and problems accessing health services remained significant once differences in English language proficie ncy and life events were taken into account. FMA appear to experience less stress adapting to life in Australia, and fewer problems with their health and access to health services, as a result of fewer logistic barriers on se ttlement and due to greater exposure to language and the host culture. Howe ver, differences in health were not completely accounted for by differences in English Language proficiency and life events Suggesting that other aspe cts of inter-cultural relationships may also be important in facilitating a cculturation. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.