IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v87y2013icp93-98.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The equalisation hypothesis and changes in geographical inequalities of age based mortality in England, 2002–2004 to 2008–2010

Author

Listed:
  • Green, Mark A.

Abstract

The equalisation hypothesis argues that during adolescence and early adulthood, inequality in mortality declines and begins to even out. However the evidence for this phenomenon is contested and mainly based on old data. This study proposes to examine how age-specific inequalities in mortality rates have changed over the past decade, during a time of widening health inequalities. To test this, mortality rates were calculated for deprivation quintiles in England, split by individual ages and sex for three time periods (2002–2004, 2005–2007 and 2008–2010). The results showed evidence for equalisation, with a clear decline in the ratio of mortality rates during late adolescence. However this decline was not accounted for by traditional explanations of the hypothesis. Overall, geographical inequalities were shown to be widening for the majority of ages, although there was some narrowing of patterns observed.

Suggested Citation

  • Green, Mark A., 2013. "The equalisation hypothesis and changes in geographical inequalities of age based mortality in England, 2002–2004 to 2008–2010," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 93-98.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:87:y:2013:i:c:p:93-98
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.03.029
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953613001986
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. West, Patrick, 1988. "Inequalities? Social class differentials in health in British youth," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 291-296, January.
    2. Williams, J. M. & Currie, C. E. & Wright, P. & Elton, R. A. & Beattie, T. F., 1997. "Socioeconomic status and adolescent injuries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(12), pages 1881-1891, June.
    3. Engström, K. & Laflamme, L. & Diderichsen, F., 2003. "Equalisation of socioeconomic differences in injury risks at school age? A study of three age cohorts of Swedish children and adolescents," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 57(10), pages 1891-1899, November.
    4. Macintyre, Sally & West, Patrick, 1991. "Lack of class variation in health in adolescence: An artefact of an occupational measure of social class?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 395-402, January.
    5. Mackenbach, Johan P. & Kunst, Anton E., 1997. "Measuring the magnitude of socio-economic inequalities in health: An overview of available measures illustrated with two examples from Europe," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 757-771, March.
    6. Chen, Edith & Martin, Andrew D. & Matthews, Karen A., 2006. "Socioeconomic status and health: Do gradients differ within childhood and adolescence?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(9), pages 2161-2170, May.
    7. West, Patrick, 1997. "Health inequalities in the early years: Is there equalisation in youth?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(6), pages 833-858, March.
    8. West, Patrick & Sweeting, Helen, 2004. "Evidence on equalisation in health in youth from the West of Scotland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 13-27, July.
    9. Torsheim, Torbjorn & Currie, Candace & Boyce, William & Kalnins, Ilze & Overpeck, Mary & Haugland, Siren, 2004. "Material deprivation and self-rated health: a multilevel study of adolescents from 22 European and North American countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 1-12, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:eee:socmed:v:192:y:2017:i:c:p:102-111 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Age; Mortality; England; Inequality; Deprivation;

    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:eee:socmed:v:87:y:2013:i:c:p:93-98. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.