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The migrant mortality advantage posits that immigrants have low mortality relative to non-migrants living in western countries, even among immigrants with a low socioeconomic status. Over time, the advantage is said to diminish as mortality among immigrants attenuates to the higher mortality rate among the host population. Among the descendants of immigrants, this mortality advantage can persist, wear off or even reverse. While immigrant mortality has been studied before in the U.S. and Europe, the actuality of the migrant mortality advantage remains contested and its causes (selection effects, cultural factors and the immigrant health transition) poorly understood. This is because two confounding factors exist which are rarely accounted for in studies. Registration uncertainty relates to the accuracy and timeliness of move reporting, stating that uncertainty in migrants’ entry and exits dates lead to overestimation of migrants’ time-at-risk in the host country. Health-related remigrations include returns to the country of origin at older ages which reflect a desire to die in the place of birth (a salmon bias effect) and at younger ages based on poorer general health (an unhealthy remigration effect). This can lead to an undercount of deaths in the host country statistics. Both of these confounding factors can cause a downward bias in migrant mortality rates, creating artificially low mortality and a data artefact. The aims of this thesis are to examine mortality patterns, and investigate the cause of mortality differences, between immigrants, their descendants and England and Wales-born population. The thesis makes several contributions to the literature. First, by adopting a rounded approach to the study of immigrant mortality through explicitly modelling the impact of registration uncertainty and investigating if immigrants remigrate in poor health from England and Wales, the research will show whether the migrant mortality advantage is an actuality or a data artefact. If the advantage is shown to be real, and registration uncertainty and health-related remigration can be dismissed as confounding causes, this will reduce much of the uncertainty surrounding the causes of the advantage. Second, the analysis of migrant mortality by sex, cause of death, generation, over age (as a proxy for length of stay) and migrants’ socioeconomic characteristics will significantly improve our understanding of the remaining causes of the migrant mortality advantage. There are few large-scale, robust international studies of immigrant mortality. This thesis thus offers a significant contribution to the international literature in a growing field of research. The analysis shows that the migrant mortality advantage cannot be accounted for by uncertainty in the registration of events and little support was found for health-related remigration among immigrants living in England and Wales. The migrant mortality advantage is an actuality and we can be confident that some combination of the healthy migrant effect, cultural factors and health transition explain the advantage. Low immigrant mortality (in nearly all groups after adjusting for socioeconomic characteristics) is driven primarily by low mortality from cancers (and in some populations from low cardiovascular disease mortality). Among many immigrant groups, low mortality coexists with low respiratory disease mortality and, among non-western immigrants, high infectious disease mortality. Low mortality among immigrants does wear off over time, but even at older ages some groups still have low mortality relative to non-migrants living in England and Wales. The descendants of immigrants do not experience a mortality advantage. They have higher mortality both before and after adjusting for their socioeconomic characteristics relative to immigrants and only similar mortality to the England and Wales-born population.

This thesis presents an investigation into the population geography of Jewish residents of England and Wales in the twenty-first century. The aims of the study are to understand the spatial distribution of the group; identify whether there are distinct differences between groupings in different parts of the country; identify whether the demographics and nature of these groups is changing over time; and to examine whether the pattern for Jews is similar to those for other minority groups of comparable size. Most importantly, the thesis theorises what the patterns found may mean for the demographic future of Anglo-Jewry. The results provide a clearer foundation for organisations responsible for the social welfare of Jewish groups in various parts of the country. In addition, as Jews have been present in Britain in significant numbers for longer than other minority groups, it provides useful insights into future trajectories for more-recently arrived groups. Thus, the findings provide an improved basis for policy formulation by the public authorities with wider responsibilities for combating disadvantage and improving social cohesion. Building on an understanding of the history of Jewish settlement in Britain, and existing demographic studies, the analysis presented takes advantage of the inclusion of a question on religion in the 2001 and 2011 censuses. The principal data sources are census outputs, including Special Migration Statistics, individual microdata, and the Longitudinal Study. The analysis investigates the heterogeneity of the group through the development of a novel geodemographic classification methodology that addresses weaknesses in other approaches and the particular needs of small, unevenly distributed sub-populations. It finds evidence of seven distinct classes, with a strong spatial clustering to their distribution. The spatial distribution of Anglo-Jewry is examined in the context of other minority groups, including previously under-studied Arabs and Sikhs; that analysis finds a strong commonality to the pattern for Jews and some other small groups – their trajectories demonstrating a tension between the benefits of group congregation (apparently driven by religion, even in sub-populations defined by ethnic group) and a desire for suburbanisation. It also identifies the strong impact of geographic scale when drawing conclusions based on distribution indices. The underlying drivers of internal migration, an important contributor to changes in spatial distribution, are examined using logistic regression, having first legitimated the use of (post-move) census-derived characteristics in migration analysis. The assessment finds a broad consistency in underlying determinants of migration and, for the Jewish group, an absence of a group penalty inhibiting the propensity to move home, present for other small groups. The patterns of recent internal migration are analysed using spatial interaction modelling and multi-nominal logistic regression; longer term (1971 onwards) patterns are also examined. Based on these analyses, and allowing for potential future patterns of births and longevity, population trends found through an innovative application of the 2011-based geodemographic analysis to 2001 census data are extrapolated to produce estimates of the Jewish population of England and Wales for future decades. The novel approach used takes account of group heterogeneity and absence of group-specific fertility and mortality data. The projection demonstrates an increasing Jewish population, in contrast to the reduction seen during the second half of the twentieth century, but with a growing proportion being found in strictly orthodox enclaves, which gives rise to a number of societal and policy implications.