Problems in the measurement and international comparison of socio-economic differences in mortality

Tapani Valkonen

Social Science & Medicine, 1993, vol. 36, issue 4, 409-418

Abstract: The opportunities for research of socio-economic differences in mortality are best in countries where a sytem of personal identification numbers makes the computerised linkage of census and death records possible. The first part of this study is an example of the use of such linked records. It presents results on the development of mortality differences by level of education and occupational class in Finland in the period 1971-1985. Socio-economic mortality differences among middle-aged and elderly men increased in Finland during the study period. The increase was mainly due to the rapid decline of mortality from cardiovascular disease among upper white-collar employees and men with more than secondary education. Relative socio-economic mortality differences were smaller among than among men and remained unchanged in 1971-1985. The second part of the article discusses the problems in international comparison of socio-economic mortality differences and summarises results from two comparative studies. The results are inconsistent: differences by level of education among men were found to be similar in six countries included in the comparison, whereas marked variation was found in the ratios of the mortality of manual workers to the mortality of non-manual workers.

Keywords: education; occupational; class; mortality; international; comparison (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(93)90403-Q
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:36:y:1993:i:4:p:409-418

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().