Ethnic and constitutional differences and their relation to breast diseases in Israel: educational and socio-economic status.

An Israeli Jewish population group consisting of 1298 cases of breast cancer and 1816 cases of benign mastopathy hospitalized in 1960-64 and 10,604 properly selected control women was studied with respect to the relationship of breast diseases to ethnic origin, educational background and socio-economic status. It was found that the percentage of Israeli-born and Orientals was higher in the benign mastopathy group than in the cancer group. For the Westerners the opposite was true. Educational level and socio-economic status were considerably higher in patients than in controls, regardless of ethnic origin. They were also higher in Westerners than in Orientals and among the Orientals higher in Iraqis than in Yemenites. The population groups with high breast cancer incidence rate appear to be on a higher educational and socio-economic level than those with a low incidence rate.