Description/Abstract
South Asian immigrants are often grouped together in U.S. health data, masking significant differences in health outcomes across subgroups. This brief uses data from the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-Year Public Use Microdata Sample (N = 6,643,738; 2020–2024) to describe disability rates among foreign-born adults from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh residing in the U.S. The authors find that while South Asian immigrants as a group have lower disability rates than U.S.-born adults, this average is driven largely by Indian immigrants, who make up about 79% of South Asians in the U.S. Among adults aged 65 and older, Bangladeshi immigrants have a disability rate of 41.0%, surpassing the U.S.-born rate of 34.3%, while immigrants from India (29.1%) and Pakistan (30.2%) remain at or below U.S.-born levels.
Document Type
Research Brief
Keywords
Disability rates, South Asian immigrants, health disparities, health data
Disciplines
Disability Studies | Population Health | Race and Ethnicity | Sociology
Date
6-9-2026
Language
English
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Alyssa Kirk and Shannon Monnat for their edits on a previous version of this brief. The authors used Claude to assist with debugging Stata code. All content was reviewed, verified, and edited by the authors, who take full responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of this work.
Recommended Citation
Mushtaq, Sobia and Garcia, Marc. A. (2026). Disability Rates Among South Asian Immigrants in the U.S. Vary by Country of Origin. Lerner Center Population Health Research Brief Series. Research Brief #145. Accessed at: https://doi.org/10.14305/rt.lerner.2026.8.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
