Migration and Mortality: What Do We Know?

The 'healthy migrant effect' refers to the observation that migrants often have better health outcomes compared to non-migrants in the host country, while the latter refers to the phenomenon of sick migrants returning to their home countries, potentially leading to underestimations of health disparities between migrants and non-migrants in the host country. [...] Assessing Death Register Data to Develop Migration Indicators: The Case of Belgium As a new approach, the assessment of mortality data in the context of migration, instead of investigating the death rates during the migration journey, we examine what mortality can say about migration and migrants (Surkyn et al., 2022). [...] They are a summary of the absolute level (=life expectancy) and of the age-dependency of mortality in a population. [...] The self-selection thesis states that the anticipated social, mental, and physical hardships of long-distance international migration and the prospect of required self-sufficiency in the destination country positively selects the most healthy and strong individuals as candidates for migration out of the sending countries. [...] Gaps in Migration Research: Review of migration theories and the quality and compatibility of migration data on the national and international level.