Divergence and convergence in cause-specific premature adult mortality in Mexico and US Mexican Hispanics from 1995 to 2015: analyses of 4.9 million individual deaths

BACKGROUND: Mexicans and US Mexican Hispanics share modifiable determinants of premature mortality. We compared trends in mortality at ages 30–69 in Mexico and among US Mexican Hispanics from 1995 to 2015. METHODS: We examined nationally representative statistics on 4.2 million Mexican and 0.7 million US deaths to examine cause-specific mortality. We used lung cancer indexed methods to estimate smoking-attributable deaths stratified by high and lower burden Mexican states. RESULTS: In 1995–99, Mexican men had about 30% higher relative risk of death from all causes than US Mexican Hispanic men, and this difference nearly doubled to 58% by 2010–15. The divergence between Mexican and US Mexican Hispanic women over this time period was less marked. Among US Mexican Hispanics, declines in the risk of smoking-attributable death constituted about 25–30% of the declines in the overall risk of death. However, among Mexican men the declines in the risk of smoking-attributable deaths were offset by increases in causes of death not due to smoking. Homicide rates (mostly from guns) rose among men in Mexico from 2005 to 2010, but not among Mexican women or US Mexican Hispanic men or women. The probability at 30–69 years of death from cardiac disease diverged significantly between Mexicans and US Mexican Hispanics, reaching 10% and 5% for men, and 7% and 2% for women, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Large differences in premature mortality between otherwise genetically and culturally similar groups arise from a few modifiable factors, most notably smoking, untreated diabetes and homicide.