Healthy migrant effect, registration errors and other difficulties when analysing the mortality of migrants. An overview. , Date: 2008.07.22, Order number: FFWP15, format: Working paper, area: Authority

The mortality of migrants and non-migrants differs systematically as a result of different nutritional, risk and and health behaviour. International studies agree in their findings that despite of the lower socioeconomic status, migrants always have a lower mortality than the non-migrant population. National studies also show that the mortality of adult migrants is always lower than among adult Germans, applies to both sexes, almost all age groups and to almost all causes of deaths.

The causes of the lower migrant mortality are often attributed to the selection processes at immigration and remigration (healthy-migrant-effect). But these results may due to lacks at the statistical registration of migrants, at least in Germany. It can be concluded that in Germany mortality analyses have not yet been comprehensively presented taking account of the migration status. For a systematic analysis of the mortality of migrants in Germany it is proposed not to use a singular database, but a mix of various ones, in order to combine the advantages of the respective databases.

Author of the study: Martin Kohls

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• Healthy-Migrant-Effect, Erfassungsfehler und andere Schwierigkeiten bei der Analyse der Mortalität von Migranten. Eine Bestandsaufnahme. (German)