On the measurement of cause of death inequality
Permanyer, Iñaki (Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics)
Almeida Calazans, Júlia (Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics)
Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics

Date:	2024
Abstract:	Background: Attempts at assessing heterogeneity in countries' mortality profiles often rely on measures of cause of death (CoD) diversity. Unfortunately, such indicators fail to take into consideration the degree of (dis)similarity among pairs of causes (e. g. 'transport injuries' and 'unintentional injuries' are implicitly assumed to be as dissimilar as 'transport injuries' and 'Alzheimer's disease')－an unrealistic and unduly restrictive assumption. Development: We extend diversity indicators proposing a broader class of heterogeneity measures that are sensitive to the similarity between the causes of death one works with. The so-called 'CoD inequality' measures are defined as the average expected 'dissimilarity between any two causes of death'. A strength of the approach is that such measures are decomposable, so that users can assess the contribution of each cause to overall CoD heterogeneity levels-a useful property for the evaluation of public health policies. Application: We have applied the method to 15 low-mortality countries between 1990 and 2019, using data from the Global Burden of Disease project. CoD inequality and CoD diversity generally increase over time across countries and sex, but with some exceptions. In several cases (notably, Finland), both indicators run in opposite directions. Conclusions: CoD inequality and diversity indicators capture complementary information about the heterogeneity of mortality profiles, so they should be analysed alongside other population health metrics, such as life expectancy and lifespan inequality.
Grants:	Agencia Estatal de Investigación PID2021-128892OB-I00 European Research Council 864616
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; divulgació ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Cause of death ; Diversity ; Dissimilarity ; Mortality profile ; Heterogeneity ; Mortality inequality
Published in:	International journal of epidemiology, Vol. 53 Núm. 2 (2024) , ISSN 1464-3685

DOI: 10.1093/ije/dyae016
PMID: 38365965

9 p, 902.2 KB

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Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Social and Legal Sciences > Centre for Demographic Studies (CED-CERCA)
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