Survivorship comparison of Native American and Caucasian inhabitants of Emmet and Cheboygan County from 1850 to 1999.

Abstract

Each ethnic and gender group is affected by different factors, which result in different demographic trends. Survivorship, the proportion of people alive during a specific age interval to total number alive at the beginning of time period studied, is used to express demographic trends. This study compares of survivorship between Native Americans with Caucasians, in Emmet and Cheboygan counties from 1850 to 1999. Native American and Caucasian data were collected from cemeteries in Emmet County ( 45 48 N, 84 75 W) and Cheboygan County (45 40 N, 84 51 W), Michigan. Male survivorship was found to be similar to or higher than female survivorship from 1850-1949; however, female survivorship became higher than male survivorship from 1950-1999. Caucasian survivorship was generally higher than Native American survivorship. Overall, survivorship for both gender and ethnic groups increased through time as people lived longer. Between 1950-1999, more women lived to be older than 75 because they survived childbirth under poor medical conditions and were not exposed to the hazardous work environments of the local logging industry and. In addition, cancer and heart disease is responsible for higher male mortality compared to women. Differences in socioeconomic situations may have contributed to the disparities between the survivorship curves of Caucasians and Native Americans. Although medical advances within the last century increased survivorship of both gender and ethnic groups, access to those medical advances, and genetic differences between men and women, and between Native Americans and Caucasians will continue to form dissimilar survivorship curves.