Journal Article
Regional inequalities in mortality in Brazil: contributions of age and cause of death to changes in life expectancy and lifespan variation between 2008 and 2018
Revista Brasileira de Estudos de População, 1–23 (2023)
Abstract
Brazil is a country marked by substantial socioeconomic inequality among regions, which translates into regional differences in mortality. To better monitoring these differences, it is important to analyze not only average levels of mortality, but also the variation in age at death. This article analyzes cause of death contributions to changes in life expectancy and age-at-death variation in Brazil and its regions between 2008 and 2018. Our results suggest an increase in regional disparities in life expectancy over the decade. However, regional differences in variation in age at death remained nearly constant. Changes in mortality by cause affect the age-at-death variation differently in each region: the reduction in mortality from external causes substantially contributed to decreasing the variation in age at death in the South and Southeast regions, whereas the contribution of deaths from conditions originating in the perinatal period was substantive only in the Northeast region. Finally, we reinterate the importance of indicators of lifespan variation to have a broader view of regional differences in mortality in Brazil.
Keywords: Brazil