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The contribution of educational inequalities to lifespan variation

BACKGROUND: Studies 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. METHODS: We used data assembled and harmonize...

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Autores principales: van Raalte, Alyson A, Kunst, Anton E, Lundberg, Olle, Leinsalu, Mall, Martikainen, Pekka, Artnik, Barbara, Deboosere, Patrick, Stirbu, Irina, Wojtyniak, Bogdan, Mackenbach, Johan P
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3299617/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22340018
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1478-7954-10-3
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author van Raalte, Alyson A
Kunst, Anton E
Lundberg, Olle
Leinsalu, Mall
Martikainen, Pekka
Artnik, Barbara
Deboosere, Patrick
Stirbu, Irina
Wojtyniak, Bogdan
Mackenbach, Johan P
author_facet van Raalte, Alyson A
Kunst, Anton E
Lundberg, Olle
Leinsalu, Mall
Martikainen, Pekka
Artnik, Barbara
Deboosere, Patrick
Stirbu, Irina
Wojtyniak, Bogdan
Mackenbach, Johan P
author_sort van Raalte, Alyson A
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Studies 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. METHODS: We 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. RESULTS: The 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. CONCLUSIONS: At 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.
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spelling pubmed-32996172012-03-13 The contribution of educational inequalities to lifespan variation van Raalte, Alyson A Kunst, Anton E Lundberg, Olle Leinsalu, Mall Martikainen, Pekka Artnik, Barbara Deboosere, Patrick Stirbu, Irina Wojtyniak, Bogdan Mackenbach, Johan P Popul Health Metr Research BACKGROUND: Studies 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. METHODS: We 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. RESULTS: The 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. CONCLUSIONS: At 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. BioMed Central 2012-02-16 /pmc/articles/PMC3299617/ /pubmed/22340018 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1478-7954-10-3 Text en Copyright ©2012 van Raalte et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
van Raalte, Alyson A
Kunst, Anton E
Lundberg, Olle
Leinsalu, Mall
Martikainen, Pekka
Artnik, Barbara
Deboosere, Patrick
Stirbu, Irina
Wojtyniak, Bogdan
Mackenbach, Johan P
The contribution of educational inequalities to lifespan variation
title The contribution of educational inequalities to lifespan variation
title_full The contribution of educational inequalities to lifespan variation
title_fullStr The contribution of educational inequalities to lifespan variation
title_full_unstemmed The contribution of educational inequalities to lifespan variation
title_short The contribution of educational inequalities to lifespan variation
title_sort contribution of educational inequalities to lifespan variation
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3299617/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22340018
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1478-7954-10-3
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