The Implications of Changing Educational Distributions for the Measurement of Socioeconomic Gradients in Mortality

• In Event: 539 - Regular Session. Methodological Challenges of Research on Mortality and Morbidity

Abstract

One of the primary goals of social demographers is to measure and understand socioeconomic differentials in life expectancy. However, recent research has questioned whether shifting education distributions across cohorts are contaminating our estimates of socioeconomic status gradients in mortality. In this study, we use high-quality Finnish register data for 1971-2005 to identify a new empirical regularity in the relationship between exact SES (percentile rank in the education distribution) and mortality ratios (the ratio of education-specific mortality to total mortality). We find that these two variables are related by a negative logarithmic curve. We specify and estimate a two parameter model that captures the great majority of the variation in this relationship. We then apply this method to generate SES quintile-specific life expectancies which are adjusted for changing education distributions. Our main findings are that SES differentials in life expectancy appear to have increased for men, but not for women between 1971 and 2005. SES inequality in mortality has increased for both sexes, but this has been cancelled out for women due to more rapid declines in overall mortality. Roughly 59% and 100% of the increase in educational differentials in life expectancy for men and women, respectively, can be attributed to shifting education distributions. Had the inequality parameters governing the Finnish population not changed over time, the difference in life expectancy between the top and bottom SES quintiles would have narrowed by 0.9 years for men and 0.4 years for women.

Authors

• Arun Hendi, Duke University

• Irma T. Elo, University of Pennsylvania

• Pekka Martikainen, University of Helsinki