Abstract
Objectives
Using new facilities for linking large databases, we aimed to evaluate for the first time the magnitude of relative and absolute educational inequalities in mortality by sex and cause of death in the Netherlands.
Methods
We analyzed data from Dutch Labour Force Surveys (1998–2002) with mortality follow-up 1998–2007 among people aged 30–79 years. We calculated hazard ratios using Cox proportional hazards model, age-standardized mortality rates and partial life expectancy by education. We compared results for the Netherlands with those for other European countries.
Results
The relative risk of dying was about two times higher among primary educated men and women as compared to their tertiary educated counterparts, leading to a gap in partial life expectancy of 3.4 years (men) and 2.4 years (women). Inequalities in mortality are similar to those in other countries in North-Western Europe, but inequalities in lung cancer mortality are substantially larger in the Netherlands, particularly among men.
Conclusions
The Netherlands has large inequalities in mortality, especially for smoking-related causes of death. These large inequalities require the urgent attention of policy makers.
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Acknowledgments
This study was financially supported by the European Commission (through the Public Health Programme, Grant Number 20081309), by the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw, project number 121020026) and by Netspar (in the framework of the project ‘Causes and consequences of rising life expectancy in the Netherlands’).
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Kulhánová, I., Hoffmann, R., Eikemo, T.A. et al. Educational inequalities in mortality by cause of death: first national data for the Netherlands. Int J Public Health 59, 687–696 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-014-0576-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-014-0576-4