Replication data for: Mortality Inequality: The Good News from a County-Level Approach

Name: Replication data for: Mortality Inequality: The Good News from a County-Level Approach
Published: 2016-05-01
License: This work is licensed under an Other license created by the data depositor. Please refer to the LICENSE file, which should be located alongside the project data and documentation.
Keywords: Spatial aggregation

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Janet Currie; Hannes Schwandt

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
_data			10/21/2021 10:29:AM
JEP_readme.pdf	application/pdf	14.3 KB	10/12/2019 02:17:PM
LICENSE.txt	text/plain	14.6 KB	10/12/2019 02:17:PM
_appendix.do	text/plain	25.4 KB	10/12/2019 02:17:PM
_datacleaning.do	text/plain	68.4 KB	10/12/2019 02:17:PM
_figures.do	text/plain	12.9 KB	10/12/2019 02:17:PM

Project Citation:

Currie, Janet, and Schwandt, Hannes. Replication data for: Mortality Inequality: The Good News from a County-Level Approach. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2016. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2019-10-12. https://doi.org/10.3886/E113970V1

Project Description

Summary: In this essay, we ask whether the distributions of life expectancy and mortality have become generally more unequal, as many seem to believe, and we report some good news. Focusing on groups of counties ranked by their poverty rates, we show that gains in life expectancy at birth have actually been relatively equally distributed between rich and poor areas. Analysts who have concluded that inequality in life expectancy is increasing have generally focused on life expectancy at age 40 to 50. This observation suggests that it is important to examine trends in mortality for younger and older ages separately. Turning to an analysis of age-specific mortality rates, we show that among adults age 50 and over, mortality has declined more quickly in richer areas than in poorer ones, resulting in increased inequality in mortality. This finding is consistent with previous research on the subject. However, among children, mortality has been falling more quickly in poorer areas with the result that inequality in mortality has fallen substantially over time. We also show that there have been stunning declines in mortality rates for African Americans between 1990 and 2010, especially for black men. Finally we offer some hypotheses about causes for the results we see, including a discussion of differential smoking patterns by age and socioeconomic status.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Spatial aggregation

JEL Classification:
      D63 Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
      I12 Health Behavior
      I14 Health and Inequality
      J10 Demographic Economics: General

Geographic Coverage: U.S. counties

Time Period(s): 1990 – 2010

Universe: US resident population

Data Type(s): administrative records data

Methodology

Data Source: Vital Statistics, Census, ACS

Unit(s) of Observation: Individuals,

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Published Versions

V1 [2019-10-12]

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