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Educational inequalities in longevity in 18 OECD countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 August 2021

Fabrice Murtin ,
Johan P. Mackenbach ,
Domantas Jasilionis  and
Marco Mira d'Ercole
Fabrice Murtin*
Affiliation:
OECD Statistics and Data Directorate, Paris, France
Johan P. Mackenbach
Affiliation:
Department of Public Health, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Domantas Jasilionis
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Marco Mira d'Ercole
Affiliation:
OECD Statistics and Data Directorate, Paris, France
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: Fabrice.Murtin@oecd.org
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Abstract

This paper assesses inequality in longevity across education and gender groups in 23 OECD countries around 2011. Data on mortality rates by age, gender, educational attainment, and, for 17 countries, cause of death were collected from national sources, with similar treatment applied to all countries in order to derive comparable measures of longevity at age 25 and 65 by gender and education. These estimates show that, on average, the gap in life expectancy between high and low-educated people is 7.6 years for men and 4.8 years for women at age 25 years, and 3.6 years for men and 2.6 years for women at age 65. At the age of 25, the gap in life expectancy between high and low-educated people varies between 4.1 years (in Canada) and 13.9 years (in Hungary) for men, and between 2.5 years (in Italy) and 8.3 years (in Latvia) for women; in the United States, the gap is 10.0 years for men and 7.0 years for women. Cardiovascular diseases are the first cause of death for all gender and education groups after age 65 years, and the first cause of mortality inequality between the high and low-education elderly.

Keywords

Cause of deathhealthinequalitylife expectancylongevitymortalitysocioeconomic gradient

JEL classification

I18: Government Policy • Regulation • Public Health I14: Health and Inequality
Type
Research Paper
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 88 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain 2021

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