Psychology and survival

Abstract

We examined the deaths of 28,169 adult Chinese-Americans, and 412,632 randomly selected, matched controls coded "white" on the death certificate. Chinese-Americans, but not whites, die significantly earlier than normal (1.3-4.9 yr) if they have a combination of disease and birthyear which Chinese astrology and medicine consider ill-fated. The more strongly a group is attached to Chinese traditions, the more years of life are lost. Our results hold for nearly all major causes of death studied. The reduction in survival cannot be completely explained by a change in the behaviour of the Chinese patient, doctor, or death-registrar, but seems to result at least partly from psychosomatic processes.