Unemployment, return migration, and immigrant mortality: The case of the Great Recession in Spain

This paper aims to assess the effect of the Great Recession on population-level immigrant mortality in Spain, highlighting the mediating effects of migration flows that shape the composition of immigrant populations. To investigate this, I use individual data from Spain's death and population registers for the period 2003-19. First, I find a significant mortality advantage at adult ages for non-Western immigrants compared with the native born. Second, I show that this mortality advantage for immigrants relative to the native born increased during the Great Recession, despite immigrants being affected more by the unemployment crisis. Unemployment-driven outmigration flows may have contributed to this change in relative mortality at ages 40-59, meaning that immigrants returning to their country were negatively selected. I argue that the crisis may have imposed a second selection on non-Western immigrants staying in Spain and that negative selection at departure-even if not due to ill health itself-affected mortality.