Duration of residence was not consistently related to immigrant mortality

This paper aimed to examine immigrant mortality according to duration of residence in the Netherlands and to compare duration-specific mortality levels to levels of mortality in the native Dutch population.

For the years 1995-2000, we linked the national cause of death register, that contains information on deaths of legal residents, to the municipal population register, that contains information on all legal residents. We studied mortality in relation to period of immigration by means of directly standardized mortality rates and Poisson regression.

All cause mortality was not related to year of immigration among Turkish and Moroccan men and women, and among Surinamese women. Among Surinamese men and among Antilleans/Aruban men and women, mortality was higher in more recent immigrants. Part of their excess mortality was due to their relatively low socioeconomic status. For most specific causes of death, no consistent relation with duration of residence was observed.

A consistent relation between duration of residence and immigrant mortality was only observed in some immigrant groups. The results suggest that the healthy migrant effect or adaptation of health-related behaviors were no predominant determinants of immigrant mortality in the Netherlands.