The authors analyze mortality for Mexican Americans by age, sex, and cause of death for the period 1969 to 1971 and present a life table for a large Mexican American population. Data are for California residents with Spanish surnames and are from the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Life expectancy of Mexican Americans by sex is examined and compared with that of other major ethnic groups, and the causes of death for Spanish-surnamed whites are analyzed
The thrust of Hoem's remarks appears to be directed at an implication he sees in one sentence quoted from our article Marriage, Divorce, and Mortality: A Life Table Analysis (Schoen and Nelson, 1974, p. 268). That statement was made at the end of a paragraph which followed a review of past efforts to construct and to present increment-decrement life tables for practical and analytical purposes. The whole paragraph reads:
The life status table, an analytical model which follows a birth cohort through life and through the never-married, presently married, widowed and divorced statuses, is developed and applied to data from four Western populations. Particular attention is given to recent marriage, remarriage, and divorce trends in California. California data for 1969 imply that 40 percent of all marriages will end in divorce, that each marrying male will marry an average of 12/3 times, and that every woman born can expect to spend 61/2 years in the divorced state. Rising divorce rates may be seen as signaling fundamental changes in both the nature of the American family and the structure of American society.
