Stereotypes mask premature death trends among Asian Americans, study finds

A new University of Toronto study suggests that stereotypes portraying Asian Americans as uniformly healthy have contributed to blind spots in U.S. mortality research. By analyzing years-of-life-lost among adults ages 25 to 84, researchers identified divergent trends across six Asian ethnic groups from 2000 to 2022. The study shows that aggregated reporting can conceal rising premature mortality in specific populations.

Led by sociologist Hui Zheng at the University of Toronto, the study examined U.S. death records for Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese Americans and compared them with non-Hispanic white Americans. Rather than focusing on life expectancy at birth, the researchers used years-of-life-lost, a measure that captures premature death, to assess changes over time.

“In our study, we found that the increase in life expectancy of Asian Americans compared to non-Hispanic white Americans has either slowed or reversed,” Zheng said. While some groups, including Japanese and Chinese Americans, continued to show more favorable trends, others experienced stagnation or increases in premature mortality over the 22-year period.

The study also found that higher educational attainment did not provide the same mortality benefits for Asian Americans as it did for white Americans. College-educated Asian Americans experienced less favorable changes in years-of-life-lost than similarly educated non-Hispanic white adults, suggesting that education alone does not fully mitigate health risks.

Zheng said the findings point to broader structural factors shaping health outcomes. “It may be prolonged exposure to discrimination that is acting as a chronic stressor,” he said. The researchers note that these pressures can accumulate over time, influencing health outcomes even among populations typically viewed as advantaged.

The authors link these patterns to the model minority myth, a long-standing narrative that portrays Asian Americans as uniformly successful, self-sufficient and low-risk. According to the study, this framing has influenced how Asian Americans are grouped in U.S. health research, often leading to the population being treated as a single category.

Public health scholars have noted that such aggregation overlooks differences in socioeconomic conditions, migration histories and access to care among Asian ethnic groups, reducing visibility into premature mortality trends affecting specific communities and limiting the effectiveness of policy responses.