Deaths Across Life Courses

Abstract

This chapter provides maps showing the geographical inequalities in causes of deaths by five age groups (0–14, 15–39, 40–64, 65–74, and 75+ years old) from 1995 to 2014 in Japan. Areas with higher standard mortality ratios (SMRs) are found in several non-metropolitan areas, particularly in the Tohoku region, while cartogram-based SMR maps highlight socioeconomic residential disparities within metropolitan areas. The social inequalities measured by the areal deprivation index are generally high among working age groups (15–39 and 40–64 years old) and their transitions indicate that the inequalities among those age groups are stable. The social inequalities of older adult groups (65–74 and 75+ years old), however, were relatively small but steadily rising between the years of 1995 and 2014. The tsunami caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 created a sudden increase of mortality across different age groups. The older adults were more likely to die than the younger population in tsunami-affected areas. However, the SMR maps show that relative increases in SMR due to the tsunami were larger among younger populations with generally low mortality even before the disaster. Since the tsunami-affected areas are relatively deprived of countryside, the disaster resulted in an increase of socioeconomic inequalities in terms of mortality in Japan.