Surprising behaviors

This past year our lab has been looking at a phenomenon termed the immigrant paradox.

The immigrant paradox refers to findings that as youth acculturate, many developmental outcomes decline (e.g. grades, academic attitudes, risk behaviors), rather than improve as one might predict.

Behavioral outcomes, both in children and in adolescents, show the most consistent evidence of a paradox. In a recent review of the literature we found that across externalizing behaviors (e.g. acting out), substance abuse, delinquency, and incarceration/arrest foreign-born children and adolescents were significantly less likely to engage in negative behaviors than their later generation or more acculturated peers (see graph above).

These findings have been echoed in research in adulthood. A 2006 article using census data and a national study on immigrant individuals finds that across ethnic groups incarceration rates are dramatically lower for foreign-born individuals than for native-born.