Almost 30% of older non-EU citizens report bad health

In 2023, 28% of non-EU citizens living in the EU aged 65 years or over perceived themselves to be in bad or very bad state of health. By contrast, only 16.6% of older citizens from other EU countries and 18.3% of nationals reported such state of bad health.

For the age group 45-64 years old, 11% of non-EU citizens also perceived themselves to be in bad or very bad health, while 9.7% of citizens of other EU countries and 8.3% of nationals reported the same situation. For people aged 16-44 years old, the different citizenship groups all reported very low numbers of bad or very bad state of self-perceived health.

This article presents a handful of findings from a more detailed Statistics Explained article on migrant integration statistics - health.

Source dataset: hlth_silc_24

Women have higher perception of bad health

Among non-EU citizens, the share of women who had a bad or very bad self-perception of health was 8.5% compared with 7.3% for men. For nationals, the number for women was 9.8% compared with 8% for men, while for citizens of another EU country, men had a higher self-perception of bad or very bad health (7.8%) than women (7.4%).

The EU countries with the highest shares of non-EU citizens in a bad or very bad state of self-perceived health were Latvia (28%), Estonia (17.5%) and France (14.3%). The lowest shares were recorded in Italy (1.5%), followed by Malta and Bulgaria (both 1.8%).