Regional mortality differentials in Greece by selected causes of death: 2006-2008

Stamatis Kalogirou, Cleon Tsimbos, Georgia Verropoulou and George Kotsifakis

Journal of Maps, 2012, vol. 8, issue 4, 354-360

Abstract: Deaths due to neoplasms and diseases of the circulatory and the respiratory system represent 80% of all deaths in Greece. In the context of dearth of statistical analysis of spatial patterns of cause-specific mortality in Greece, this paper aims at studying the distribution and structure of appropriate mortality measures for the above mentioned causes of death at prefecture level. To achieve this, official statistics on deaths (2006-2008) and population (2007) are employed and Standardized Mortality Ratios (SMRs) by gender and cause of death are estimated using as 'standard' mortality schedule the national age-sex and cause-specific death rates. Estimation of Moran's I statistic revealed the existence of significant positive spatial autocorrelation for neoplasms and circulatory diseases. Empirical Bayes procedures were employed to adjust SMR values which, although show less dispersion, were close to the original estimates. The thematic maps depict regions with relatively high ( SMR s > 100) or low ( SMR s > 100) mortality and their significance levels, indicating that spatial patterns exhibit many similarities between sexes for each cause of death. SMRs for neoplasms and circulatory diseases show a roughly similar tendency; lower mortality compared to the country's average in southern and western Greece and the islands, and higher mortality in northern Greece, especially in the Region of East Macedonia and Thrace. Patterns due to respiratory diseases, on the other hand, differ somewhat but the corresponding relative risks are not as significant. Thorough observation and analysis of the conditions prevailing in northern Greece is needed to identify factors exacerbating ill health.

Date: 2012
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17445647.2012.743439 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:tjomxx:v:8:y:2012:i:4:p:354-360

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tjom20

DOI: 10.1080/17445647.2012.743439

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Maps is currently edited by Dr Mike Smith, Dr Jeremy Porter and Dr Dick Berg

More articles in Journal of Maps from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().