International Journal of Intercultural Relations 25 (2001) 531–543 The effect of partners’ ethnicity on the health of Filipinas in Australia Margaret Kelaher a,b, *, Gail M. Williams c , Lenore Manderson a a Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society, The University of Melbourne, Australia b Division of Health Policy and Management, Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 630 West 168th Street, New York, NY 10032-3702, USA c Australian Centre for International and Tropical Health and Nutrition, University of Queensland, Australia Abstract Women from the Philippines constitute one of the largest groups of female immigrants from Asia to Australia. One-third of these immigrants migrate to marry or join Australian husbands, and they are the largest group immigrating to Australia for these reasons. Social, physical and environmental factors, health status, and health service utilization were compared for Filipinas married to men born in Australia (FMA) and Filipinas married to men born in the Philippines (FMF), in order to explore the effect of marriage partner’s background on acculturation, stress and mental health. It was hypothesized that: (1) Settlement-related life events such as moving house and changing jobs are likely to be more common among FMF than FMA because of less well-established networks in Australia. (2) FMA are likely to have better English language skills than FMF because of their increased exposure to Australian culture. (3) IfFMFaredisadvantagedintermsofacculturationtheirmentalhealthoutcomesshould be worse than FMA. (4) Health differences between FMA and FMF will largely be due to differences in acculturation. FMA had greater English language proficiency than FMF. FMF were more likely to have movedhouseandexperiencedifficultyorproblemsatwork.FMFweremorelikelythanFMA toexperienceproblemshandlingdailytasks,stress,orothermentalhealthproblems,andhave *Corresponding author. Division of Health Policy and Management, Joseph L. Mailman School of PublicHealth,ColumbiaUniversity,630West168thStreet,NewYork,NY10032-3702,USA.Tel.:+1- 212-305-2856; fax: +1-212-305-3405. E-mail address: mk699@columbia.edu (M. Kelaher). 0147-1767/01/$-see front matter r 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0147-1767(01)00021-9