Infant mortality among native-born children of immigrants in France, 2008–17: results from a socio-demographic panel survey

Wallace, Matthew; Khlat, Myriam; Guillot, Michel

Abstract

Background
Within Europe, France stands out as a major country that lacks recent and reliable evidence on how infant mortality levels vary among the native-born children of immigrants compared with the native-born children of two parents born in France.

Methods
We used a nationally representative socio-demographic panel consisting of 296 400 births and 980 infant deaths for the period 2008–17. Children of immigrants were defined as being born to at least one parent born abroad and their infant mortality was compared with that of children born to two parents born in France. We first calculated infant mortality rates per 1000 live births. Then, using multi-level logit models, we calculated odds ratios of infant mortality in a series of models adjusting progressively for parental origins (M1), core demographic factors (M2), father's socio-professional category (M3) and area-level urbanicity and deprivation score (M4).

Results
We documented a substantial amount of excess infant mortality among those children born to at least one parent from Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, Western Africa, Other Sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas, with variation among specific origin countries belonging to these groups. In most of these cases, the excess infant mortality levels persisted after adjusting for all individual-level and area-level factors.

Conclusions
Our findings, which can directly inform national public health policy, reaffirm the persistence of longstanding inequality in infant mortality according to parental origins in France and add to a growing body of evidence documenting excess infant mortality among the children of immigrants in Europe.

Citation

Wallace, M., Khlat, M., & Guillot, M. (2021). Infant mortality among native-born children of immigrants in France, 2008–17: results from a socio-demographic panel survey. European Journal of Public Health, 31(2), 326-333. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckaa186

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 1, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Nov 30, 2020
• Publication Date: Apr 24, 2021
• Deposit Date: Aug 27, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 19, 2024
• Journal: European Journal of Public Health
• Print ISSN: 1101-1262
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 31
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 326-333
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckaa186