Reassessing the migrant health gap across multiple origin and destinations

June Haugrud , European University Institute
Maarten Vink, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Juho Härkönen, European University Institute

The “healthy migrant effect” (HME) refers to migrants’ health advantage relative to non-migrants in destination countries with similar socioeconomic profiles. This advantage is often attributed to positive health selection in origin countries. Yet, evidence remains inconclusive, and few studies simultaneously compare migrants to both origin and destination populations. Using all 11 rounds (2002–2024) of the European Social Survey, we construct a dyadic dataset of 11,565 migrants across 39 countries to reassess the migrant health gap. We apply a two-step predictive modeling strategy to estimate counterfactual health levels for each migrant based on non-migrant populations in both their country of origin and destination. Our findings reveal that the healthy migrant effect is context-dependent. Migrants tend to show a singular advantage: they are healthier than non-migrants in either origin or destination, but rarely both. As such, this challenges the expectations of the selection hypothesis. Moreover, the direction of the gap reflects national health levels: migrants to healthier destinations tend to exceed their origin populations in health, while those from healthier origins tend to fall below their origin populations but remain healthier than their destination population. These results challenge the notion of universal migrant health advantages and highlight the importance of considering health differences relative to both origin and destination societies in migration research.

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 Presented in Session 110. Geography, Environment and the Role of Place in Health