Exploring Educational Inequalities in Mortality in Europe

Abstract

__Abstract__ Socioeconomic inequalities in health are reported in all European countries, but with substantial variations in their magnitude. Reducing these inequalities should be a priority not only because such inequalities are unfair but also because their burden has huge economic consequences. The association between education and health has been demonstrated for different health outcomes. This thesis aimed at exploring the educational inequalities in all-cause and cause-specific mortality in Europe in a comparative perspective. Based on mortality and morbidity data from a large number of European populations, we first investigated the quality of cause-specific mortality data by assessing educational differences in the proportion of ill-defined causes of death. Then, the magnitude of educational inequalities in mortality was estimated and the trends in these inequalities between the 1990s and the 2000s were analysed. Finally, the thesis focused on quantifying the potential health gains and inequality reductions due to different policies and interventions using the Population Attributable Fractio