Life Satisfaction and Healthcare Utilization Among Immigrants to the United States

Previous research suggests a relationship between life satisfaction and healthcare
utilization or HCU (Habibov & Afandi, 2016; Kim, Park, Sun, Smith, & Peterson, 2014).
However, no study was found that examined this relationship among elderly American
immigrants. The purpose of this study was to determine whether life satisfaction is linked to
HCU for this population. The researcher of the current study applied binary logistic regression to
data taken from the Health and Retirement Survey to determine whether changes in life
satisfaction could be linked to variance in HCU across seven domains, including hospitalization,
overnight nursing home stays, doctors visits, dentist visits, use of prescription medications, use
of home health, and outpatient surgery. Results of this analysis suggested that a significant
relationship did exist between life satisfaction and each of these domains, although the
relationships varied in direction and effect size.