The contribution of educational inequalities to lifespan variation

Population Health Metrics

Research

Olle Lundberg¹  Bogdan Wojtyniak²  Irina Stirbu³  Johan P Mackenbach³  Barbara Artnik⁴  Anton E Kunst⁵  Patrick Deboosere⁶  Pekka Martikainen⁷  Alyson A van Raalte⁸  Mall Leinsalu⁹ 

[1] Centre for Health Equity Studies, Stockholm University/Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden;Department of Health Sciences, Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden;Department of Monitoring and Analyses of Population Health, National Institute of Public Health-National Institute of Hygiene, Warsaw, Poland;Department of Public Health, Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands;Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia;Department of Public Health, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Academic MC, The Netherlands;Department of Social Research, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium;Department of Sociology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland;Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany;Department of Public Health, Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands;Stockholm Centre on Health of Societies in Transition, Södertörn University, Södertörn, Sweden;Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the National Institute for Health Development, Tallinn, Estonia;

关键词: Lifespan variation;    Life expectancy;    Socioeconomic inequality;    Education;    International variation;    Mortality;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1478-7954-10-3

 received in 2011-09-06, accepted in 2012-02-16,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundStudies of socioeconomic inequalities in mortality consistently point to higher death rates in lower socioeconomic groups. Yet how these between-group differences relate to the total variation in mortality risk between individuals is unknown.MethodsWe used data assembled and harmonized as part of the Eurothine project, which includes census-based mortality data from 11 European countries. We matched this to national data from the Human Mortality Database and constructed life tables by gender and educational level. We measured variation in age at death using Theil's entropy index, and decomposed this measure into its between- and within-group components.ResultsThe least-educated groups lived between three and 15 years fewer than the highest-educated groups, the latter having a more similar age at death in all countries. Differences between educational groups contributed between 0.6% and 2.7% to total variation in age at death between individuals in Western European countries and between 1.2% and 10.9% in Central and Eastern European countries. Variation in age at death is larger and differs more between countries among the least-educated groups.ConclusionsAt the individual level, many known and unknown factors are causing enormous variation in age at death, socioeconomic position being only one of them. Reducing variations in age at death among less-educated people by providing protection to the vulnerable may help to reduce inequalities in mortality between socioeconomic groups.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© van Raalte et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012