Autism prevalence much higher - immigrant children in Norway

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According to the finding of the study involving 142 children aged 2 to 6 diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) from Sør-Trøndelag, a county in central Norway, children born to immigrant mothers were up to seven times more likely to develop autism symptoms than their peers born to Norwegian-born mothers. Furthermore, the children of foreign-born mothers — who became pregnant and delivered their babies within the borders of the Scandinavian country — also had a higher than average risk of developing more severe ASD symptoms.

Researchers are not sure what can explain these trends, but the findings suggest that the mothers’ immigrant backgrounds could impact the cognitive development of their children somehow — how exactly remains to be seen.

Compared to other countries, Norway has a very robust program for infant health care, which monitors the development of young children up to five years old regardless of their socioeconomic or ethnic background. So, for instance, if a child has difficulty speaking at ages 2-4, the case can be flagged for subsequent screening for ASD.

The study analyzed anonymized patient records for 142 children diagnosed with ASD between 2016 and 2019 in Sør-Trøndelag, which likely represent most if not all autistic children who were given a formal diagnosis during these years.

Researchers found that 0.74% of children in Sør-Trøndelag whose parents immigrated to Norway were diagnosed with ASD, compared to just 0.1% of children whose mothers had a Norwegian background. The children whose mothers had a foreign background also scored higher on an autism diagnosis test, averaging a score of 19 compared to 15.3 for children with ASD born to Norwegian mothers.

The seven to one ratio is puzzling, to say the least. It suggests an overdiagnosis of ASD children born to immigrant mothers, and an underdiagnosis of ASD children with Norwegian mothers, or quite possibly both. But the authors of the study point out that the deviations from neurotypical behavior are quite obvious, and the heightened risk of autism for children born to immigrant mothers can also explain why their symptoms are more severe.

Another study reviewed patient data on nearly 5,000 children with ASD in Sweden. One in five had both parents born outside Sweden, most of whom hailed from Africa, western Asia, and northern Europe. Higher rates of autism with intellectual disability were found to be among children of parents who had come to Sweden from resource-poor countries.

To this day, most research on autism focuses on mostly white and middle-class families. Since it’s critical that kids with ASD get diagnosed early and gain access to high-quality treatment, an immigrant background could be more closely watched in the future, as far as autism diagnosis goes.

I doubt that Norwegian immigration conditions have a great impact on this.

Skilled immigrants from relatively backward places mean that they are the local selected technical elite - which overlaps with autistic tendencies.
This is like the connection between Silicon Valley and more autistic children.