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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Socio-economic inequalities in mortality persist into old age in New Zealand
— study of all 65 years plus, 2001-04 | | Author(s) | Santosh Jatrana, Tony Blakely |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 34, no 6, July 2014 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, July 2014 |
| Pages | pp 911-929 |
| Source | journals.cambridge.org/aso |
| Keywords | Economic status [elderly] ; Death rate [statistics] ; Socio-economic groups ; Indicators ; New Zealand. |
| Annotation | A number of studies have explored the relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and mortality, although these have mostly been based on the working-age population, despite the fact that the burden of mortality is highest in older people. This study inked New Zealand census and mortality data (2001-04, 1.3 million person years) with a comprehensive set of socio-economic indicators (education, income, car access, housing tenure, neighourhood deprivation). The authors used Poisson regression to examine the association of socio-economic characteristics and older adult mortality (65+ years) in New Zealand. They found that socio-economic mortality gradients persist into old age. Substantial relative risks of mortality were observed for all socio-economic factors, except housing tenure. Most relative risk associations decreased in strength with ageing; for example, most deprived compared to least deprived rate ratio for males reducing from 1.40 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.28-1.53) for 65-74-year-olds to 1.13 (CI 1.00-1.28) for those aged 85+], except for income and education among women where the rate ratios changed little with increasing age. This suggests individual-level measures of SES are more closely related to mortality in older women than older men. Comparing across genders, the only statistically significantly different association between men and women was for a weaker association for women for car access. The merit of using alternative measures of SES such as neighbourhood deprivation is noted. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-150526001 A |
| Classmark | F:W: S5: T4: 3RI: 7YN |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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