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Lifespan Variation by Occupational Class: Compression or Stagnation Over Time?

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  • Alyson van Raalte
  • Pekka Martikainen
  • Mikko Myrskylä

Abstract

Cross-sectional analyses of adult lifespan variation have found an inverse association between socioeconomic position and lifespan variation, but the trends by social class are unknown. We investigated trends in lifespan variation over four decades (1971–2010) by occupational social class (manual, lower nonmanual, upper nonmanual, other) using Finnish register data. We performed age and cause-of-death decompositions of lifespan variation for each sex (a) by occupational class over time and (b) between occupational classes at a shared level of life expectancy. Although life expectancy increased in all classes, lifespan variation was stable among manual workers and decreased only among nonmanual classes. These differences were caused by early-adult mortality: older-age lifespan variation declined for all the classes, but variation in early-adult mortality increased for all classes except the highest. The manual class’s high and stagnant lifespan variation was driven by declines in circulatory diseases that were equally spread over early mortality-compressing and older mortality-expanding ages, as well as by high early-adult mortality from external causes. Results were similar for men and women. The results of this study, which is the first to document trends in lifespan variation by social class, suggest that mortality compression is compatible with increasing life expectancy but currently achieved only by higher occupational classes. Copyright Population Association of America 2014

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  • Alyson van Raalte & Pekka Martikainen & Mikko Myrskylä, 2014. "Lifespan Variation by Occupational Class: Compression or Stagnation Over Time?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(1), pages 73-95, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:demogr:v:51:y:2014:i:1:p:73-95
    DOI: 10.1007/s13524-013-0253-x
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    2. José M. Aburto & Alyson A. van Raalte, 2017. "Lifespan dispersion in times of life expectancy fluctuation: the case of Central and Eastern Europe," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2017-018, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    3. Joseph T. Lariscy & Claudia Nau & Glenn Firebaugh & Robert A. Hummer, 2016. "Hispanic-White Differences in Lifespan Variability in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 53(1), pages 215-239, February.
    4. Malene Kallestrup‐Lamb & Søren Kjærgaard & Carsten P. T. Rosenskjold, 2020. "Insight into stagnating adult life expectancy: Analyzing cause of death patterns across socioeconomic groups," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(12), pages 1728-1743, December.
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    6. Serena Vigezzi & Jose Manuel Aburto & Iñaki Permanyer & Virginia Zarulli, 2022. "Divergent trends in lifespan variation during mortality crises," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 46(11), pages 291-336.
    7. Iñaki Permanyer & Jeroen Spijker & Amand Blanes & Elisenda Renteria, 2018. "Longevity and Lifespan Variation by Educational Attainment in Spain: 1960–2015," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(6), pages 2045-2070, December.
    8. Chiara Gigliarano & Ugofilippo Basellini & Marco Bonetti, 2017. "Longevity and concentration in survival times: the log-scale-location family of failure time models," Lifetime Data Analysis: An International Journal Devoted to Statistical Methods and Applications for Time-to-Event Data, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 254-274, April.
    9. Jose Manuel Aburto & Jesús-Adrián Alvarez & Francisco Villavicencio & James W. Vaupel, 2019. "The threshold age of the lifetable entropy," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 41(4), pages 83-102.
    10. Torben M. Andersen & Cecilie Marie Løchte Jørgensen, 2024. "The Distributional Implications of Pension Benefit Indexation," CESifo Working Paper Series 10943, CESifo.
    11. Seaman, Rosie & Riffe, Tim & Leyland, Alastair H. & Popham, Frank & van Raalte, Alyson, 2019. "The increasing lifespan variation gradient by area-level deprivation: A decomposition analysis of Scotland 1981–2011," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 230(C), pages 147-157.
    12. Glenn Firebaugh & Francesco Acciai & Aggie Noah & Christopher Prather & Claudia Nau, 2014. "Why Lifespans Are More Variable Among Blacks Than Among Whites in the United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(6), pages 2025-2045, December.
    13. Iñaki Permanyer & Nathalie Scholl, 2019. "Global trends in lifespan inequality: 1950-2015," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-19, May.
    14. Shang, Han Lin & Haberman, Steven & Xu, Ruofan, 2022. "Multi-population modelling and forecasting life-table death counts," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 239-253.
    15. Gustavo DeSantis, 2014. "More with less: the Almost Ideal Pension Systems (AIPS)," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 12(1), pages 169-192.
    16. José Manuel Aburto & Alyson van Raalte, 2018. "Lifespan Dispersion in Times of Life Expectancy Fluctuation: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(6), pages 2071-2096, December.

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