Racial Disparities in Mortality During the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in United States Cities

Abstract

Against a backdrop of extreme racial health inequality, the 1918 influenza pandemic resulted in a striking reduction of non-White to White influenza and pneumonia mortality disparities in United States cities. We provide the most complete account to date of these reduced racial disparities, showing that they were unexpectedly uniform across cities. Linking data from multiple sources, we then examine potential explanations for this finding, including city-level sociodemographic factors such as segregation, implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions, racial differences in exposure to the milder spring 1918 “herald wave,” and racial differences in early-life influenza exposures, resulting in differential immunological vulnerability to the 1918 flu. While we find little evidence for the first three explanations, we offer suggestive evidence that racial variation in childhood exposure to the 1889–1892 influenza pandemic may have shrunk racial disparities in 1918. We also highlight the possibility that differential behavioral responses to the herald wave may have protected non-White urban populations. By providing a comprehensive description and examination of racial inequality in mortality during the 1918 pandemic, we offer a framework for understanding disparities in infectious disease mortality that considers interactions between the natural histories of particular microbial agents and the social histories of those they infect.

“We are our memory”: Quantifying the demographic imprints of the past

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Social inequalities and mortality during the 1918 influenza pandemic on the island of Newfoundland

“…Mamelund (2006) and have used historical demographic data to identify gradients of social inequalities in risk of mortality and excess mortality during the 1918 influenza pandemic by controlling for crowding and social class in Norway and Sweden, respectively. Research has also identified disparities on the basis of socially constructed race, such as the disparities between white and Black Americans (Eiermann et al, 2021;Økland & Mamelund, 2019), and significantly worse outcomes identified for Indigenous groups worldwide, but specifically in Labrador, Alaska, and some Pacific Islands Sattenspiel & Mamelund, 2013;Shanks et al, 2018). Recently, Dimka (2021a, 2021b) have fully reviewed the multifaceted nature of the impacts of social inequalities on pandemic outcomes.…”