Differences in Life Expectancy by Migrant Status across the European Union

Andrea Succi , Eurostat - European Commission
Veronica Corsini, European Commission, Eurostat

This abstract presents an ongoing project at Eurostat to develop the first comparable measures of life expectancy by place of birth on a regular basis for each EU Member State. Life expectancy by place of birth is one of the most important measures to identify health inequalities between foreign-born and native-born individuals. It has often been shown that foreign-born individuals in European countries have lower mortality rates than native-born individuals, the so-called “migrant mortality advantage”. However, foreign-born individuals have been shown to have been more heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic than native-born in several countries. Eurostat has a project to develop such estimates for native-born and foreign-born individuals in each EU Member State in order to obtain the first comparable measures of differences in life expectancy by place of birth across Member States. For this reason, this work aims to show the data that Eurostat will use to calculate life expectancy by place of birth, the methodology adopted, and the results obtained. This will allow us to observe trends in recent years, how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected differences between native-born and foreign-born individuals in life expectancy and how these differences vary by sex.

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 Presented in Session P2. Health, Mortality, Ageing - Aperitivo