Volume 17 - Article 5 | Pages 109-134

Characteristics of urban regions and all-cause mortality in working-age population: Effects of social environment and interactions with individual unemployment


Date received:	08 Nov 2006
Date published:	24 Aug 2007
Word count:	5479
Keywords:	all-cause mortality, area effects, cross-level interactions, multilevel analysis, unemployment
DOI:	10.4054/DemRes.2007.17.5

Abstract

Using Finnish register data on individuals linked to information on urban regions, this study aimed to estimate the effects of some regional characteristics on all-cause mortality among working-age population in 1995-2001, and to find out whether these effects are different among those long-term unemployed than among others. Multilevel Poisson regression models were used. The characteristics of regions included unemployment rate, level of urbanisation, voting turnout, a summary measure of family cohesion, and the geographic location of the region. Our study showed that effects of most area characteristics on mortality were clear among those who suffered from long-term unemployment in the baseline but not among others, adjusting for basic socio-demographic characteristics of the individuals. The results thus suggest that the weaker in the society are more vulnerable to the effects of social
environment than those better off.