N. Brimblecombe et al., Mortality and migration in Britain, first results from the British Household Panel Survey, SOCIAL SC M, 49(7), 1999, pp. 981-988
This study investigates the extent to which current geographical variations
in mortality are influenced by patterns of migration since birth. It is ba
sed on a longitudinal study of migrants which consists of a representative
sample of 10264 British residents born after 1890 and enumerated as part of
the British Household Panel Study in 1991. Between 1991 and 1996, 527 of t
he study members died and these deaths were analysed by area of residence a
t birth and in 1991 at both the regional and local district geographical sc
ales. These were compared with findings from the Office for National Statis
tics Longitudinal Study.
The British Household Panel Survey sample replicates the results of work co
nducted on the Longitudinal Study which finds that geographical variations
in age-sex standardised mortality ratios at the regional scale cannot be at
tributed to selective migration. However, for the British Household Panel S
urvey sample, the major geographical variations at district level could be
attributed to selective migration.
Geographical variations in mortality are not well understood. Restrictions
on what it is possible to analyse in the Office for National Statistics Lon
gitudinal Study may have resulted in the underestimation of the importance
of local lifetime selective migration in producing the contemporary map of
mortality variation across Britain. The British Household Panel Survey is a
small, recent, but very flexible study, which can be used to investigate t
he effects of lifetime migration on mortality patterns for all of Britain.
This first report of its results on mortality shows that it produces findin
gs which accord with the much larger Longitudinal Study, but which can be t
aken further to show that selective migration over the whole life-course at
the local level does appear to have significantly altered the geographical
pattern of mortality seen in Britain today. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd.
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