Ethnic minorities: mortality in Scotland by country of birth

Country of birth provides only an approximate guide to ethnic group but in the absence of information on ethnicity, it has been widely used as a proxy for ethnicity. A number of analyses of mortality by country of birth have been reported for England and Wales: for example, Gill et al (843KB) described mortality by country of birth for the years around the 1991 Census. Until recently no similar analyses were available for Scotland. However Fischbacher et al (2007) (see Key references) published data on all cause and cardiovascular mortality by country of birth in Scotland for the 6.25 year period 1997-2003. These data also form part of a more extensive internal research project report authored by Bhopal et al (2005) . (468Kb)

Chart 1 and 2  show that compared to those born in Scotland, CHD mortality was lower in those born in other parts of the UK or in other parts of the world. Further analyses from this project show that compared with those living in England and Wales, CHD mortality was substantially higher among people living in Scotland and born in Scotland, Ireland (North or South), India or Pakistan.

Charts 1 and 2. Mortality by ethnicity in Scotland from Coronary Heart Disease (CHD).

Males and females in most of the larger ethnic minority groups in Scotland have longer life expectancies than the majority White Scottish population (Gruer et al (2016). Pakistani females have the longest life expectancy (84.6; 95% CI 82.0 to 87.3) and White Scottish males the shortest (74.7 years; 74.6 to 74.8).