BMC Public Health
BioMed Central
Open Access
Research article
Trends in absolute socioeconomic inequalities in mortality in Sweden and New Zealand. A 20-year gender perspective Sarah Wamala*1, Tony Blakely2 and June Atkinson2 Address: 1Swedish National Institute of Public Health and Karolinska Institutet, Sweden and 2Department of Public Health, Wellington School of Medicine, New Zealand Email: Sarah Wamala* -
[email protected]; Tony Blakely -
[email protected]; June Atkinson -
[email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 21 June 2006 BMC Public Health 2006, 6:164
doi:10.1186/1471-2458-6-164
Received: 08 March 2006 Accepted: 21 June 2006
This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/6/164 © 2006 Wamala et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: Both trends in socioeconomic inequalities in mortality, and cross-country comparisons, may give more information about the causes of health inequalities. We analysed trends in socioeconomic differentials by mortality from early 1980s to late 1990s, comparing Sweden with New Zealand. Methods: The New Zealand Census Mortality Study (NZCMS) consisting of over 2 million individuals and the Swedish Survey of Living Conditions (ULF) comprising over 100, 000 individuals were used for analyses. Education and household income were used as measures of socioeconomic position (SEP). The slope index of inequality (SII) was calculated to estimate absolute inequalities in mortality. Analyses were based on 3–5 year follow-up and limited to individuals aged 25–77 years. Age standardised mortality rates were calculated using the European population standard. Results: Absolute inequalities in mortality on average over the 1980s and 1990s for both men and women by education were similar in Sweden and New Zealand, but by income were greater in Sweden. Comparing trends in absolute inequalities over the 1980s and 1990s, men's absolute inequalities by education decreased by 66% in Sweden and by 17% in New Zealand (p for trend
