Does Population Composition Explain the US Advantage in Old-Age Mortality?

expectancy than European populations. A number of potential explanations for this finding have been proposed. This paper investigates whether the inclusion of immigrants in the American population deflates mortality rates enough to explain the crossover. First, mortality rates are calculated controlling for nativity; second, mortality of second-generation Americans is taken into account. Excluding these populations from the white, non-Hispanic American population is not sufficient to remove the crossover, although it does push the crossover two years older. Analyses indicate that Hispanic ethnicity (often included within the “white ” population in American demographic data) may exert a more powerful compositional effect than nativity. 1Although the United States health care system has been called the most expensive in the world (Hilts 1991), the overall picture of health in the United States is not as bright as in some other developed countries. In twenty-two developed countries, life expectancy at birth for males is higher than in the United States (NCHS 1996). Infant mortality in the United States is also ranked outside the top twenty in the world, although more money is spent on care for premature infants in the US than anywhere else in the world (NCHS 1996). The one place where the United States health care system appears to shine is in the health of the oldest population. Although lif