Testing the influenza-tuberculosis selective mortality hypothesis with Union Army data

Noymer, A. (2009). Testing the influenza-tuberculosis selective mortality hypothesis with Union Army data. Social Science and Medicine 68 (9) 1599-1608. 10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.02.021.

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Abstract

Using Cox regression, this paper shows a weak association between having tuberculosis and dying from influenza among Union Army veterans in late nineteenth-century America. It has been suggested elsewhere [Noymer, A. and M. Garenne (2000). The 1918 influenza epidemic's effects on sex differentials in mortality in the United States. Population and Development Review 26(3), 565-581.] that the 1918 influenza pandemic accelerated the decline of tuberculosis, by killing many people with tuberculosis. The question remains whether individuals with tuberculosis were at greater risk of influenza death, or if the 1918/post-1918 phenomenon arose from the sheer number of deaths in the influenza pandemic. The present findings, from microdata, cautiously point toward an explanation of Noymer and Garenne's selection effect in terms of age-overlap of the 1918 pandemic mortality and tuberculosis morbidity, a phenomenon I term "passive selection". Another way to think of this is selection at the cohort, as opposed to individual, level.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Historical demography; Historical epidemiology; Influenza; Mortality; Selection; Tuberculosis; Union Army veterans; USA
Research Programs:	Health and Global Change (HGC)
Bibliographic Reference:	Social Science and Medicine; 68(9):1599-1608 (May 2009)
Depositing User:	IIASA Import
Date Deposited:	15 Jan 2016 08:42
Last Modified:	27 Aug 2021 17:38
URI:	https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/8855

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