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

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.

Non-White/White ratios of influenza and pneumonia mortality by year. Mortality values (unlogged) are portrayed on a logged-scale y-axis. The 1918 pandemic (gray shading) was characterized by uniformly reduced racial disparities in mortality relative to in nonpandemic years. The dotted line indicates a mortality ratio of 1, that is, an equal number of White and non-White deaths per 100,000 individuals. The thick horizontal lines indicate city-level medians, with lines above and below indicating 75th and 25th percentiles, respectively. Vertical lines span 1.5 times the interquartile range.