Mortality and Socio-economic Differences in a Competing Risks Model

Abstract:

This paper presents evidence on how mortality in Denmark is related to different socio-economic indicators. By use of a unique and extensive sample of the Danish population, we examine how mortality is related to factors such as education, occupation, skill level and income for the years 1992-97. We employ a competing risks proportional hazard model to allow for different causes of death. This turns out to be of importance as some factors have unequal (and sometimes opposite) influence on the cause-specific mortality rates. Particularly, we find that the often found inverse correlation between socio-economic status and mortality to a large degree is absent for women that die due to cancer.