Using Census Microdata to Explore the Inter-relationship Between Ethnicity, Health, Socioeconomic Factors and Internal Migration

Ethnic inequalities in health, although widely observed, are not fully understood. In the context of increasing ethnic diversity, the pathways by which these disparities are maintained, widened or even narrowed must be examined. Theories of selective sorting between area types and social classes may help explain changing ethnic health gradients in England as opportunities and propensities for either internal migration or social mobility vary between ethnic groups. Further, processes of selective sorting can help us interpret the complex inter-relationships between ethnicity, health, socioeconomic factors and internal migration. In this chapter, we explore these relationships using cross-sectional and longitudinal microdata to establish whether selective sorting may vary between ethnic groups and if selective sorting is contributing to changing ethnic health gradients. Through analysis of the Census Samples of Anonymised Records, we find that despite marked variations in the propensity to migrate by ethnic groups, the relationship between migration and health is consistent between ethnic groups. However, we show that the extent of the influence of socioeconomic status on the health-migration relationship does vary. To assess the contribution of selective sorting to changing ethnic health gradients, we use the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Study to compare the health of different groups transitioning between deprivation quintiles and social classes. Our results show that these transitions can contribute to changing ethnic health gradients. Further, it is likely that for minority groups, movement within the middle deprivation quintiles may be particularly important in terms of the contribution to changing health gradients.