Differential mortality by ethnicity: foreign-born Irish, Italians and Jews in New York City, 1979-81.

This paper compares the mortality experience of foreign-born Irish, Italians and Jews in New York City in 1979-81. For the Irish and Italian groups, 1980 census data were used to calculate age-specific and age-standardized death rates. For the Jewish group, denominator data were not available, so proportional mortality analysis was used. An estimate was made to show the degree to which standardized proportional mortality ratios approximated relative standard mortality measures. Major causes of death and other selected causes were examined. The results of this analysis support previous studies showing mortality is significantly greater among Irish-born immigrants than among the Italian born. The proportional mortality data suggest that the Jewish and Italian groups have cause of death distributions relatively similar to each other and dissimilar to the Irish group. Alcohol-related causes of death appear to be a major source of the uniqueness of the Irish mortality experience.