Traveller death rates

On Politics.ie today I read the shocking figures that have come from the new book Travellers' Last Rights: Responding to Death in a Cultural Context, A study which has analysed health statistics from the last 2 decades. The figures show that the death rate among the travelling community is on par with the general population....back in the 1940's

Some of the more shocking figures were

1. 50 per cent of Travellers die before their 39th birthday and some 70 per cent fail to live past the age of 59.


2. 10 per cent of Traveller children die before their second birthday, compared to just 1 per cent of the general population


3. 2.6 per cent of all deaths in the total population were for people aged under 25 versus 32 per cent in the Traveller data.


4. Men exclusively accounted for all suicide deaths among Travellers, over three-quarters of whom were aged less than 39 years