| Summary: | 碩士 === 中臺科技大學 === 醫護管理研究所 === 96 === Background:
International or cross-cultural marriages have become prevalent in Taiwan. In 2007, there were 398,720 transnational marriage couples registered in Taiwan; 90% of which were marriages to alien brides, mostly from Mainland China and the Southeastern Asian countries. The fertility rate of these registered alien brides from 1998 to 2007 was 10%. However, little is known about the health status of the children born to these women. For proper health planning, it is essential to have detailed information on the health status of this group of children as they constitute a significant portion of Taiwan’s future generation.
Purpose:
The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of parents’ socioeconomic position and local area deprivation on the health of children born to transnational married couples residing in Taiwan.
Methods:
This is a cross-sectional study using data from 2003 “The survey on Living Status of Immigrant Women” administered by the Ministry of the Interior. There were 287,059 new female immigrants included in this study. New female immigrants were classified as arriving from Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao regions, Southeastern Asia, and other countries. Taiwan was divided into 25 administrative areas based on the 2003 “Taiwan-Fukien Demographic Fact Book.” Area deprivation was defined as a composite index of two items: (1) proportion of primary care occupational population; (2) prevalence of non-schooling among the population aged 15-17 years. A composite rank score from 1.25 (least deprived) to -1.30 (most deprived) was calculated and quintilised for the 25 areas in this analysis.
Chi-square tests were used to examine the significance of bivariate relationships between parents’ socioeconomic position, area deprivation and children’s health. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to estimate odds ratios for the independent association of parents’ characteristics to their children’s health. Also, transformation of logistic models were used to report the marginal effects of the independent variables.
Results:
Logistic regression models, controlling for other maternal characteristics and socioeconomic factors, revealed that fathers’ job, education level, health status, income level as well as mothers’ job, migration status, and area deprivation were significant predictors of the children’s health. Families with lower socioeconomic positions and those residing in economically deprived areas were significantly more likely to have children with poorer health.
Marginal effects showed that the children’s sex, fathers’ education, employment status, health status, and income level, as well as the mothers’ employment status, migration status, were the most important factors determining the health status of the children.
Conclusion:
Maternal nativity status was not associated with children’s health status. Alternatively, socioeconomic position of the family, health status of the parents, and local area deprivation were found to be determinants of the health status of children born to transnational couples. Policies focusing on the optimization of these determinants could benefit the health of a large portion of Taiwan’s children.
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