More Immigration Leads to Better Nursing Home Care, Says New Paper

During the COVID-19 pandemic, worker shortages hit American nursing homes particularly hard. A survey conducted last year by the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) found that 87 percent of nursing home providers were grappling with moderate to high staffing shortages. According to a January AHCA/NCAL analysis of labor data, nursing homes have lost 210,000 jobs since the pandemic began—”the worst job loss of any health care sector.”

That decline presents an obvious problem since the number of Americans 65 and older is projected to reach 80 million by 2040. But a new National Bureau of Economic Research paper points to a promising solution: immigration.

The paper found “strong and consistent evidence that increased immigration leads to improved patient care,” as well as a decline in hospitalizations corresponding with an increase in female immigrants. That’s according to new research from Harvard University’s David C. Grabowski, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Jonathan Gruber, and the University of Rochester’s Brian McGarry. Their paper relies on a sample of over 16 million Medicare beneficiaries in 13,000 nursing homes.

“Collectively, these results suggest that immigrants increase the quality of care of older adults residing in nursing homes,” they write.

Adverse outcomes decline during short-term stays—especially restraints, which fall by 7 percent for every one-unit increase in female immigrants per nursing home residents. During longer stays, the researchers report “a strong negative impact on use of