Volume 20 - Article 18 | Pages 435–466  

Geographical mortality patterns in Italy: A Bayesian analysis

By Fabio Divino, Viviana Egidi, Michele Antonio Salvatore

Abstract

In this paper, we present a hierarchical spatial model for the analysis of geographical variation in mortality between the Italian provinces in the year 2001, according to gender, age class, and cause of death. When analysing counts data specific to geographical locations, classical empirical rates or standardised mortality ratios may produce estimates that show a very high level of overdispersion due to the effect of spatial autocorrelation among the observations, and due to the presence of heterogeneity among the population sizes. We adopt a Bayesian approach and a Markov chain Monte Carlo computation with the goal of making more consistent inferences about the quantities of interest. While considering information for the year 1991, we also take into account a temporal effect from the previous geographical pattern. Results have demonstrated the flexibility of our proposal in evaluating specific aspects of a counts spatial process, such as the clustering effect and the heterogeneity effect.

Author’s Affiliation

• Fabio Divino - Università degli Studi del Molise, Italy EMAIL
• Viviana Egidi - Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Italy EMAIL
• Michele Antonio Salvatore - Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT), Italy EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

A network approach to studying cause-of-death interrelations
Volume 38 - Article 16

Revisiting the mortality of France and Italy with the multiple-cause-of-death approach
Volume 23 - Article 28

Ageing and diversity: Inequalities in longevity and health in low-mortality countries
Volume 50 - Article 12

Frailty at death: An examination of multiple causes of death in four low mortality countries in 2017
Volume 49 - Article 2

Similar article in Demographic Research

The negative educational gradients in Romanian fertility
Volume 22 - Article 4    | Keywords: educational attainment, fertility, relative risks, Romania, unobserved heterogeneity