The statistics attracted the attention of many Internet users on social networks between Friday, December 31 and Sunday, January 2: immigrants represent 50% of deaths due to the Covid-19 epidemic in France. This figure, which would have been published by an academic in an article published in a specialized journal, would be taken from data from INSEE. But is it true or fake?
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The questionable quote is taken from the third issue of the year 2021 of the French review of social affairs, in which reflections on social issues are published. The sentence appears in an article written by a sociologist and entitled: “The fabric of health inequalities. A social reality too often kills”. Here is what can be read on page 120: “According to the latest data from INSEE, immigrants account for 50% of all deaths from the coronavirus epidemic.”
The number is “false” and the author does “a bad read” of INSEE publications, Judge Sylvie Le Minez, Head of the Demographic and Social Studies Unit at the National Institute of Statistics. On Twitter, INSEE also denied, Monday January 3, be “the source of this figure”. The author of the article, Marguerite Cognet, teacher-researcher in social sciences at Paris-Diderot University, acknowledges with franceinfo “a reproduction error” and ensure that “this sentence will be removed from the online version” of its text. But where does the error come from and what do the INSEE figures really say?
The data analyzed by INSEE do not concern immigrants, i.e. people born abroad abroad and living in France, according to the definition adopted by the institute, but people born abroad. . Gold, “among those born abroad, a large proportion are immigrants, but not only”, specifies Sylvie Le Minez. According to the population estimate made by INSEE in 2020, France has 8.5 million inhabitants born abroad, including 6.8 million immigrants. The remaining 1.7 million people were born of French nationality, but outside French territory. And “in these statistics on deaths, we do not distinguish between people who were born of French or non-French nationality”, explains Sylvie Le Minez.
These statistics also do not relate to deaths solely attributable to Covid, but all those occurring during a year. In this case, in 2020, the year from which the epidemic began in France. As it writes in its publications, INSEE studies mortality from civil status data. “INSEE has death certificates which are sent by town halls. These are deaths from all causes.”, details Sylvie Le Minez. There is therefore no distinction between the different causes of death. As a result, “INSEE does not measure deaths linked to Covid”, corn “the evolution of deaths from all causes”.
However, it is “undeniable” that“there was an excess mortality of people born abroad compared to those born in France” during the first year of Covid-19, confirms Sylvie Le Minez. But that does not represent half of the deaths occurring in 2020. Explanations: l‘Insee published on April 16, 2021 a study on mortality in 2020. The authors notably observed a “higher increase” mortality “for people born abroad than for those born in France”, “especially in March-April”, or during the first wave of the epidemic.
In France, deaths increased by 9% in 2020 compared to 2019. There is “around 56,000 more deaths”, figure Sylvie Le Minez. “This increase in deaths is largely linked to Covid, recognizes the INSEE framework. But other causes of death may have varied upwards or downwards between these two years. ” And we can see, overall, that theincrease was more than twice as high for people born abroad compared to those born in France (+ 17% against + 8%). The increase in mortality was much larger in March and April 2020, compared to the same period in 2019: + 49% for deaths of people born abroad, against + 23% for deaths of people born in France.
These 56,000 more deaths observed in 2020, largely attributable to Covid-19, concern around 76% of people born in France and around 24% of people born abroad, adds Sylvie Le Minez. A quarter, therefore, and not half as it is written in the article shared on social networks. “This statistic of 24% is absolutely significant”, however, note the head of the demographic and social studies unit at INSEE, “because the population born abroad, in early 2020 in France, represents 12.7% of the total population.”
This excess mortality observed in people born abroad since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic, confirmed by INSEE in another publication at the end of November 2021, has been studied by statisticians, demographers and epidemiologists to identify the reasons. It appears that these are above all linked to socio-economic and demographic factors. This population, largely immigrant, is “over-represented among workers in so-called front-line trades, highly exposed during the first wave, in particular”, notes Myriam Khlat, research director at INED and specialist in the demographic study of immigrant mortality. “At the start of the epidemic, protection was not enough, recalls the demographer. We didn’t have any masks yet, we weren’t using enough hydroalcoholic gel. “
These people are also “more likely to take public transport”, add Myriam Khlat. EThey live alongside more people and expose themselves to a greater risk of contamination. Another explanation put forward: they “live in denser neighborhoods and housing”. “The fact of having a lot of contacts and of being in a population where there are more infected, in an epidemic, that creates clusters and a snowball effect”, points out Anne-Sophie Jannot, specialist in epidemiology and biostatistics at the Georges-Pompidou European hospital, in Paris.
Finally, “from a health point of view, they have more risk factors which lead to severe forms of the disease”, continues Myriam Khlat. Analyzing this work by INSEE, sociologists Solène Brun and Patrick Simon, specialists in immigration and discrimination issues, recalled in July 2020 in the review Contretemps that both diabetes and respiratory diseases are over-represented in certain immigrant populations.
Demographer Myriam Khlat lists other factors: the material difficulties linked to the lack of financial resources, the discrimination these populations face, the difficulties encountered in accessing healthcare, the language barrier, or even cultural differences. … “This accumulation explains the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on these populations”, says the expert. These are all reasons also identified by Solène Brun and Patrick Simon in their work summarized by INED in June 2020 on the excess mortality observed in Seine-Saint-Denis, a department with a high immigrant population and a low standard of living.
“Social factors prevail, confirms Anne-Sophie Jannot. Covid more easily affects vulnerable populations, but there is often a link between precariousness and immigration. ” Published in October 2020 by the DREES (Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics), the first results of the national EpiCov survey (PDF), carried out on a representative sample of the population, underline this. The study focused on the seroprevalence of Sars-CoV-2, i.e. the proportion of people who have developed antibodies against the virus responsible for Covid. This was estimated from the samples taken at the end of the confinement, in May 2020 (when there was no vaccine yet).
This seroprevalence appears “twice as high” among immigrants from countries outside Europe than among non-immigrants (9.4%, against 4.1% among non-immigrants). This percentage is comparable to those observed in the departments most affected by the first wave of the epidemic: Paris (9%), the departments of the inner suburbs (9.5%) and Haut-Rhin (10.8% ). “People born abroad more often live in the regions most affected by the epidemic, in Ile-de-France in particular “, remarks Sylvie Le Minez.
The difference in seroprevalence is identical between residents of overcrowded (9.3%) and non-overcrowded (4.3%) housing. It is also close to that observed among people living in a priority district of city policy (QPV): 8.2% against 4.2% for the rest of the territory. “The living conditions of immigrants, often less favorable than those of the rest of the French population, very probably explain” this higher exposure to the virus, summarizes the Drees.