Nativity, marital status and mortality in Canada

In this exploratory study I examine mortality differences by marital status across seven immigrant groups and the Canadian-born population. Nativity is thought to condition this relationship through its association with migration selection and family structure. Since migration is selective of healthy persons, immigrants should constitute a relatively healthy subset of the population. Therefore, health selection into marriage should be of secondary importance in differentiating survival differences between single and married foreign-born persons. However, selectivity into the marital institution may be important within the larger and more heterogeneous Canadian-born population. Some immigrant ethnic communities have more complex systems of extended kin relations than others. Based on the postulates of the protection theory of mortality, the more extensive the family network, the smaller should be the survival gap between married and non-married persons. Multivariate analyses of cause-specific death rates provide only partial confirmation for these hypothesized relationships. The most consistent finding in this study is that for both immigrants and the Canadian-born, married persons enjoy lower levels of mortality than either single or unmarried individuals. Thus, the marital status and mortality relationship observed in the international setting also prevails among immigrant and native-born populations in Canada. Although the protective roles of marriage and family on mortality seem undeniable, indirect evidence suggests that health selection into marriage also contributes to the lower death rates of married people.