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BMC Public Health
Published in: BMC Public Health 1/2014

Open Access 01-12-2014 | Research article

Socioeconomic differences in the use of ill-defined causes of death in 16 European countries

Authors: Ivana Kulhánová, Gwenn Menvielle, Matthias Bopp, Carme Borrell, Patrick Deboosere, Terje A Eikemo, Rasmus Hoffmann, Mall Leinsalu, Pekka Martikainen, Enrique Regidor, Maica Rodríguez-Sanz, Jitka Rychtaříková, Bogdan Wojtyniak, Johan P Mackenbach

Published in: BMC Public Health | Issue 1/2014

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Abstract

Background

Cause-of-death data linked to information on socioeconomic position form one of the most important sources of information about health inequalities in many countries. The proportion of deaths from ill-defined conditions is one of the indicators of the quality of cause-of-death data. We investigated educational differences in the use of ill-defined causes of death in official mortality statistics.

Methods

Using age-standardized mortality rates from 16 European countries, we calculated the proportion of all deaths in each educational group that were classified as due to “Symptoms, signs and ill-defined conditions”. We tested if this proportion differed across educational groups using Chi-square tests.

Results

The proportion of ill-defined causes of death was lower than 6.5% among men and 4.5% among women in all European countries, without any clear geographical pattern. This proportion statistically significantly differed by educational groups in several countries with in most cases a higher proportion among less than secondary educated people compared with tertiary educated people.

Conclusions

We found evidence for educational differences in the distribution of ill-defined causes of death. However, the differences between educational groups were small suggesting that socioeconomic inequalities in cause-specific mortality in Europe are not likely to be biased.
Appendix
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Metadata
Title
Socioeconomic differences in the use of ill-defined causes of death in 16 European countries
Authors
Ivana Kulhánová
Gwenn Menvielle
Matthias Bopp
Carme Borrell
Patrick Deboosere
Terje A Eikemo
Rasmus Hoffmann
Mall Leinsalu
Pekka Martikainen
Enrique Regidor
Maica Rodríguez-Sanz
Jitka Rychtaříková
Bogdan Wojtyniak
Johan P Mackenbach
Publication date
01-12-2014
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Public Health / Issue 1/2014
Electronic ISSN: 1471-2458
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-1295

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