Immigrant status, gender and work disability duration: findings from a linked, retrospective cohort of workers’ compensation and immigration data from British Columbia, Canada

OBJECTIVES: To compare differences in work disability durations of immigrant men and women injured at work to comparable Canadian-born injured workers in British Columbia, Canada. METHODS: Data on accepted workers compensation claims and immigration status from 1995 and 2012 were used to compare the number of work disability days paid at the 25%, 50% and 75% for immigrant and Canadian-born injured workers stratified by gender and recency of immigration. RESULTS: Immigrant workers comprised 8.9% (78 609) of the cohort. In adjusted quantile regression models, recent and established immigrant women received 1.3 (0.8, 1.9) and 4.0 (3.4, 4.6) more paid disability days at the 50% of the disability distribution than Canadian-born counterparts. For recent and established immigrant men, this difference was 2.4 (2.2, 2.6) and 2.7 (2.4, 4.6). At the 75%, this difference increased for recent immigrant men and established immigrant men and women but declined for recent immigrant women. CONCLUSIONS: Injured immigrants receive more work disability days than their Canadian-born counterparts except for recent immigrant women. Both immigrant status and gender matter in understanding health disparities in work disability after work injury. KEYWORDS WORK DISABILITY: immigrant health; linked administrative data.