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Exploring the Inequality-Mortality Relationship in the US with Bayesian Spatial Modeling

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Abstract

While there is evidence to suggest that socioeconomic inequality within places is associated with mortality rates among people living within them, the empirical connection between the two remains unsettled as potential confounders associated with racial and social structure are overlooked. This study seeks to test this relationship, to determine whether it is due to differential levels of deprivation and social capital, and does so with intrinsically conditional autoregressive Bayesian spatial modeling that effectively addresses the bias introduced by spatial dependence. We find that deprivation and social capital partly but do not completely account for why inequality is positively associated with mortality and that spatial modeling generates more accurate predictions than does the traditional approach. We advance the literature by unveiling the intervening roles of social capital and deprivation in the inequality-mortality relationship and offering new evidence that inequality matters in US county mortality rates.

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Acknowledgments

We received support from the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at University at Albany, SUNY, which receives funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD; R24-HD04494309). This work was also partially supported by the Social Science Research Institute and Population Research Institute (NICHD; R24-HD41025) at Penn State University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Center for Social and Demographic Analysis, University at Albany, State University of New York, 315 Arts & Sciences Building, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY, 12222, USA

    Tse-Chuan Yang

  2. Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology and Education, The Population Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, 110-A Armsby, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Leif Jensen

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  1. Tse-Chuan Yang
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Correspondence to Tse-Chuan Yang.

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Yang, TC., Jensen, L. Exploring the Inequality-Mortality Relationship in the US with Bayesian Spatial Modeling. Popul Res Policy Rev 34, 437–460 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-014-9350-9

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