Widening Educational Differentials in Mortality: Analysis for Austria with International Comparisons

Abstract

Recent studies have reported a widening in the relative mortality gap between thesocioeconomic classes in several industrialized western countries. The present paper aimsto determine whether or not education-related differentials in mortality have increasedbetween 1981/82 and 1991/92 in Austria, and compares the findings with those from otherEuropean countries, the USA and New Zealand. For the Austrian analysis the source of thedata is based on a one year mortality follow up of the entire Austrian census population,and contains for the examined population aged 30-74 in total 3,805,208 individual recordsfor 1981/82 and 4,064,184 records for 1991/92 of which 34,218 and 29,443 were deceased.The study applies a sophisticated measure of inequality that takes into account the relativeposition of the educational groups, since changing educational compositions over time mayreduce comparability. The findings suggest that educational inequalities in mortality havewidened in Austria, but more among men than among women. The Austrian results aresimilar to patterns observed in the other countries. However, the international trends varywith regard to age groups and sex.