Mortality among the Baffin Inuit in the mid-80s

This article proposes to describe mortality among the Inuit of the Baffin region during the 1983-1987 period and to compare it with that of Canadians as a whole. Mortality among the Baffin Inuit is clearly higher than that of the Canadian population as a whole. Life expectancy at birth is 66.6 years, approximately 10 years lower than that for the general Canadian population (76.3 years). Injuries and poisoning, neoplasms, and diseases of the respiratory system are the leading causes of death observed among the Baffin Inuit. For each of these causes, the rates obtained for the Inuit are significantly higher than those for the total population of Canada.