ASIAN AMERICAN ELDERS

ASIAN AMERICAN ELDERS
There are 861,725 Asian American elders, the fastest-
growing group fueled by immigration. Asian
American elders in the United States were composed
of 29% Chinese, 21% Filipino, 20% Japanese, 9%
Korean, 8% Vietnamese/Cambodian, 1% Hmong, and
12% other Asian ethnicities in 2002. National aggre-
gated statistics indicate a physically healthy Asian and
Pacific Islander elderly population, with some noted
exceptions. Life expectancy at birth is 79.5 years for
Japanese males and 84.5 for females, 79.8 for Chinese
males and 86.1 for females, 77.6 for Filipino males
and 81.5 for females in Hawaii. Although Japanese
and Chinese immigrant elderly populations have
excellent physical health, their more acculturated
American counterparts, Hmong or Pacific Islander
elders, have poorer health outcomes. There are high
rates of preventable cancers such as cervical cancers
among Vietnamese women and alarming rates of
breast cancer among Japanese and Chinese American
women. Native Hawaiian women have the second-
highest prevalence of breast cancer among Asian
Americans.
Although scarce, there is much more information
about the physical health of Asian and Pacific Islander
elderly than on their mental health status during the
second half of life. Although there are no large preva-
lence studies of psychiatric disorders among Asian
American elderly samples, several small studies
indicate comparable depression, somatic psychiatric
distress, and dementia rates between European
American and Asian American (Chinese, Korean,
Japanese) elderly samples. However, the high rate of
suicide among Asian elderly women suggests poor
mental health outcomes