Estimating Mortality among Immigrants in the Presence of Out-Migration

Michel Guillot , University of Pennsylvania
Nestor Aldea, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Romeo Gansey, University of Pennsylvania
Myriam Khlat, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Irma T. Elo, University of Pennsylvania

Mortality among immigrants is notoriously difficult to capture in data sources due to the fact that immigrants are by nature a very mobile population, subject to high rates of out-migration from their host country. These difficulties limit the ability to properly track and address the mortality conditions of immigrants in host countries. In this paper, we take advantage of a rich, unique longitudinal data set from France to directly evaluate the relative effect of two major biases in mortality estimation that arise from out-migration: censoring bias and salmon bias. Preliminary results show that at ages 65+, these two biases contribute to underestimation of immigrant mortality but do not fundamentally change the overall conclusion that immigrants experience a mortality advantage relative to the native born population. These results remove ambiguity about the veracity of the immigrant mortality advantage and help better understand the actual mortality conditions experienced by immigrants.

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 Presented in Session 30. Migrant Health