Do people who move take on their new country's life expectancy?
Suppose a person moves at 60 to a country where people who reach 60 live two years longer on average. Does the person gain the two years?
The question has two parts. How do the death rates of people who move compare with those of the people already living there? And do those death rates change with time?
Researchers call the first part the healthy migrant effect. Studies of people born abroad often find lower death rates than among local-born people. A 2018 review in The Lancet pooled many studies. It found that international migrants had a death rate about 30% lower than the host population. The ratio was 0.70, with a range of 0.65 to 0.76.
Most of those migrants were young. The review notes that the advantage appeared in studies of young migrants who came to study, work or join family, mostly in high-income countries. People well enough to move tend to be healthier than the average person who stays.
A study across several host countries found the advantage strongest for people who arrive as young adults. It is weaker for people who arrive near retirement age. It is also strongest soon after arrival and shrinks with time.
Part of the apparent advantage may come from counting. People who spend part of the year abroad may die abroad, and those deaths may be missing from the host country's records. Errors in reported age can also play a part.
Over time, many migrants take on the habits and health of the local population. A study of migrants in Spain describes this convergence in lifestyle, health and mortality. A World Bank paper says convergence is sometimes seen but does not always happen. It also reports that newly arrived migrants from rich countries had higher death rates than Belgians.
A study in Brazil followed about 45 million people, including 277,230 born abroad. Those born abroad had lower death rates than Brazilian-born people. The authors note they were older, better educated and living in better conditions on average. People who moved within Brazil had about the same death rates as people who stayed.
None of these studies is about retirees who move for the way of life. Most follow workers, students and families. We found no study of retirees alone.
So our life expectancy calculator shows a range. You choose how much of the difference between two countries applies to you: a quarter, half or all of it.
Extra years for a 60-year-old who moves from the United States, compared with staying (our calculation, average habits)
| Person and move | A quarter applies | Half applies | All applies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Woman to Spain | +0.7 | +1.4 | +2.9 |
| Woman to Japan | +0.9 | +2.0 | +4.5 |
| Woman to Mexico | −0.3 | −0.7 | −1.3 |
| Man to Spain | +0.3 | +0.6 | +1.2 |
| Man to Japan | +0.5 | +1.1 | +2.2 |
| Man to Mexico | −0.4 | −0.8 | −1.5 |
Based on World Health Organization death rates for 2019.
In the tables, moves to Spain and Japan add years and moves to Mexico subtract them. The tables are averages for each whole country, across everyone who lives there. They do not describe a particular city or the kind of care a person uses.
The habits a person brings may matter as much as the address. Another article in this series covers five habits and how much each adds.
So did the two years come along? The studies suggest part of the gap may. How much is not known.
If you have moved abroad, what changed in your daily routine? Tell us in the comments. Someone may be weighing the same move.
Sources we read
Global patterns of mortality in international migrants: a systematic review and meta-analysis, The Lancet, 2018. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32781-8/fulltext
Understanding age variations in the migrant mortality advantage, PLOS ONE. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0199669
How does origin affect migrant mortality advantage in Spain? PubMed Central. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12361318
KNOMAD Paper 57, Migration and Mortality: What Do We Know? World Bank. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099813108232414572/pdf/IDU-5e2f21d4-fd0c-4c40-8060-501de48101af.pdf
Mortality among over 6 million internal and international migrants in Brazil, 100 Million Brazilian Cohort. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9986634
World Health Organization, Global Health Observatory, life tables for 2019. https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/life-expectancy-at-age-60-(years)
Tell us in the comments