Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Aug 26;19(1):34.
doi: 10.1186/s12963-021-00264-1.

Method for reconstructing mortality by educational groups

László Németh  1 , Domantas Jasilionis  2 , Henrik Brønnum-Hansen  3 , Dmitri A Jdanov  2
Affiliations

Method for reconstructing mortality by educational groups

László Németh et al. Popul Health Metr. .

Abstract

Background: The lack of classification by educational attainment in death and population exposure data at older ages is an important constraint for studying changes and patterns of mortality disparities by education in Denmark and Sweden. The missing educational distribution of population also restricts analyses aiming at estimating contributions of compositional change to the improvements in national longevity. This study proposes a transparent approach to solve the two methodological issues allowing to obtain robust education-specific mortality estimates and population weights.

Methods: Using nonparametric approach, we redistribute the unknown cases and extrapolate the mortality curves of these sub-populations with the help of population-level data on an aggregate level from the Human Mortality Database.

Results: We present reconstructed and harmonized education-specific abridged and complete life tables for Sweden and Denmark covering 5-year-long periods from 1991-1995 to 2011-2015. The newly estimated life tables are in good agreement with the national life tables and show plausible age- and education-specific patterns. The observed changes in life expectancy by education suggest about the widening longevity gap between the highest and lowest educated for males and females in both countries.

Conclusions: The proposed simple and transparent method can be applied in similar country-specific cases showing large proportions of missing education or other socio-economic characteristics at older ages.

Keywords: Educational differences; Life expectancy; Old-age mortality.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Distribution of population by education, period, and sex in Sweden. The proportion of population with unknown education, designated by orange colour, is higher in the earlier periods and at older ages
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Relationship between mortality of each group compared to the total mortality in the dataset in Sweden in 1991–1995 for females. Each curve is extrapolated between ages 75 and 110, designated by dashed lines, respectively. The extrapolated curves converge to the total mortality and reach the value 1 at age 110
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Reconstructed mortality on a logarithmic scale by education, period, and sex in Sweden. Mortality curves fully reconstructed after applying our procedure without irregularities and crossovers at older ages
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Proportion of population by education, period, and sex in Denmark. According to our assumption, the population shares by educational groups are stable at older ages
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Mackenbach J, Menvielle G, Jasilionis D, de Gelder R. Measuring educational inequalities in mortality statistics. 2015.
    1. Vallin J. Socio-economic determinants of mortality in industrialized countries. Popul Bull United Nations. 1980;13:26–41. - PubMed
    1. Kunst AE, Groenhof F, Borgan J-K, Costa G, Desplanques G, Faggiano F, Hemström O, Martikainen P, Vågerö D, Valkonen T, et al. Socio-economic inequalities in mortality. Methodological problems illustrated with three examples from Europe. Revue depidemiologie et de sante publique. 1998;46(6):467. - PubMed
    1. Shkolnikov VM, Jasilionis D, Andreev EM, Jdanov DA, Stankuniene V, Ambrozaitiene D. Linked versus unlinked estimates of mortality and length of life by education and marital status: evidence from the first record linkage study in Lithuania. Soc Sci Med. 2007;64(7):1392–1406. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2006.11.014. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Sorlie PD, Johnson NJ. Validity of education information on the death certificate. Epidemiology. 1996;7:437–439. doi: 10.1097/00001648-199607000-00017. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources