Differential mortality by ethnicity and nativity: foreign- and native-born Irish, Italians, and Jews in New York City, 1979-1981.

This paper compares the mortality experience of foreign- and native-born Irish, Italians, and Jews in New York City in 1979-81. In most cases, denominator data were not available, so proportional mortality analysis was used. An estimation procedure was undertaken to show the degree to which standardized proportional mortality ratios approximate relative standardized mortality measures. Major and lifestyle-related causes of death were examined, as were specific sites of cancer. While no consistent pattern merged which related nativity or ethnicity to the relative distribution of mortality, it does appear that the intra-ethnic patterns of the Irish group were unique relative to those of the Italian and Jewish groups. Overall, this study suggests a number of interesting relationships between ethnicity, nativity, and the distribution of mortality by cause.