IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0193488.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Regional inequalities in premature mortality in Great Britain

Author

Listed:
  • Thomas Plümper
  • Denise Laroze
  • Eric Neumayer

Abstract

Premature mortality exhibits strong spatial patterns in Great Britain. Local authorities that are located further North and West, that are more distant from its political centre London and that are more urban tend to have a higher premature mortality rate. Premature mortality also tends to cluster among geographically contiguous and proximate local authorities. We develop a novel analytical research design that relies on spatial pattern recognition to demonstrate that an empirical model that contains only socio-economic variables can eliminate these spatial patterns almost entirely. We demonstrate that socioeconomic factors across local authority districts explain 81 percent of variation in female and 86 percent of variation in male premature mortality in 2012–14. As our findings suggest, policy-makers cannot hope that health policies alone suffice to significantly reduce inequalities in health. Rather, it requires strong efforts to reduce the inequalities in socio-economic factors, or living conditions for short, in order to overcome the spatial disparities in health, of which premature mortality is a clear indication.

Suggested Citation

  • Thomas Plümper & Denise Laroze & Eric Neumayer, 2018. "Regional inequalities in premature mortality in Great Britain," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(2), pages 1-16, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0193488
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193488
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0193488
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0193488&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0193488?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angus S. Deaton & Christina Paxson, 2001. "Mortality, Education, Income, and Inequality among American Cohorts," NBER Chapters, in: Themes in the Economics of Aging, pages 129-170, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. van Doorslaer, Eddy & Wagstaff, Adam & Bleichrodt, Han & Calonge, Samuel & Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Gerfin, Michael & Geurts, Jose & Gross, Lorna & Hakkinen, Unto & Leu, Robert E., 1997. "Income-related inequalities in health: some international comparisons," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 93-112, February.
    3. Langford, Ian H. & Bentham, Graham, 1996. "Regional variations in mortality rates in England and Wales: An analysis using multi-level modelling," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 897-908, March.
    4. Eddy van Doorslaer & Xander Koolman, 2004. "Explaining the differences in income‐related health inequalities across European countries," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(7), pages 609-628, July.
    5. Norman, Paul & Boyle, Paul & Exeter, Daniel & Feng, Zhiqiang & Popham, Frank, 2011. "Rising premature mortality in the UK’s persistently deprived areas: Only a Scottish phenomenon?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(11), pages 1575-1584.
    6. Martyn Senior, 1998. "Area Variations in Self-perceived Limiting Long Term Illness in Britain, 1991: Is the Welsh Experience Exceptional?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(3), pages 265-280.
    7. Marmot, M. & Allen, J.J., 2014. "Social determinants of health equity," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 104(S4), pages 517-519.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maite Blázquez Cuesta & Elena Cottini & Herrarte, A. (Ainhoa), 2012. "GINI DP 39: Socioeconomic Gradient in Health: How Important is Material Deprivation?," GINI Discussion Papers 39, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    2. David Cantarero & Marta Pascual & Jose Maria Sarabia, 2004. "Can income inequality contribute to understand inequalities in health? An empirical approach based on the European Community Household Panel," ERSA conference papers ersa04p230, European Regional Science Association.
    3. Maite Blázquez & Elena Cottini & Ainhoa Herrarte, 2014. "The socioeconomic gradient in health: how important is material deprivation?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(2), pages 239-264, June.
    4. Benedicte Apouey & Andrew E. Clark, 2015. "Winning Big but Feeling no Better? The Effect of Lottery Prizes on Physical and Mental Health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(5), pages 516-538, May.
    5. Apouey, Bénédicte & Geoffard, Pierre-Yves, 2013. "Family income and child health in the UK," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 715-727.
    6. Javier Alvarez-Galvez, 2018. "Multidimensionality of Health Inequalities: A Cross-Country Identification of Health Clusters through Multivariate Classification Techniques," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-12, September.
    7. Teresa Bago d'Uva & Eddy Van Doorslaer & Maarten Lindeboom & Owen O'Donnell, 2008. "Does reporting heterogeneity bias the measurement of health disparities?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(3), pages 351-375, March.
    8. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00566789 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. van Kippersluis, Hans & Van Ourti, Tom & O'Donnell, Owen & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2009. "Health and income across the life cycle and generations in Europe," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 818-830, July.
    10. Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2002. "Income Inequality and Health Status in the United States: Evidence from the Current Population Survey," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 37(3), pages 510-539.
    11. Martins, Lurdes & Veiga, Paula, 2010. "Do inequalities in parents' education play an important role in PISA students' mathematics achievement test score disparities?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 1016-1033, December.
    12. Gonzalo Edwards & Raimundo Soto & Felipe Zurita, 2020. "Life Expectancy and Income Levels in Chile," Documentos de Trabajo 544, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    13. Owen O'Donnell & Eddy Van Doorslaer & Tom Van Ourti, 2013. "Health and Inequality," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 13-170/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    14. Kobus, Martyna & Kurek, Radosław, 2018. "Copula-based measurement of interdependence for discrete distributions," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 27-39.
    15. Timothy Ludlow & Jonas Fooken & Christiern Rose & Kam Tang, 2022. "Incorporating Financial Hardship in Measuring the Mental Health Impact of Housing Stress," Papers 2205.01255, arXiv.org.
    16. Xu, Ke Tom, 2006. "State-level variations in income-related inequality in health and health achievement in the US," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 457-464, July.
    17. Kim, Hoolda & Mitra, Sophie, 2022. "Dynamics of health and labor income in Korea," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 21(C).
    18. Eddy van Doorslaer & Owen O'Donnell, 2008. "Measurement and Explanation of Inequality in Health and Health Care in Low-Income Settings," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2008-04, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    19. Max Coveney & Pilar (P.) Garcia-Gomez & Eddy (E.K.A.) van Doorslaer & Tom (T.G.M.) van Ourti, 2018. "Every crisis has a silver lining? Unravelling the pro-cyclical pattern of health inequalities by income," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 18-066/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    20. M. Kamrul Islam & Ulf‐G. Gerdtham & Philip Clarke & Kristina Burström, 2010. "Does income‐related health inequality change as the population ages? Evidence from Swedish panel data," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(3), pages 334-349, March.
    21. Nordin, Martin & Dackehag, Margareta & Gerdtham, Ulf-G., 2013. "Socioeconomic inequalities in drug utilization for Sweden: Evidence from linked survey and register data," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 106-117.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N0 - Economic History - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0193488. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.