1887

OECD Statistics Working Papers

The OECD Statistics Working Paper Series - managed by the OECD Statistics and Data Directorate – is designed to make available in a timely fashion and to a wider readership selected studies prepared by staff in the Secretariat or by outside consultants working on OECD projects. The papers included are of a technical, methodological or statistical policy nature and relate to statistical work relevant to the organisation. The Working Papers are generally available only in their original language - English or French - with a summary in the other.

Joint Working Papers:

Testing the evidence, how good are public sector responsiveness measures and how to improve them? (with OECD Public Governance Directorate)

Measuring Well-being and Progress in Countries at Different Stages of Development: Towards a More Universal Conceptual Framework (with OECD Development Centre)

Measuring and Assessing Job Quality: The OECD Job Quality Framework (with OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs)

Forecasting GDP during and after the Great Recession: A contest between small-scale bridge and large-scale dynamic factor models (with OECD Economics Directorate)

Decoupling of wages from productivity: Macro-level facts (with OECD Economics Directorate)

Which policies increase value for money in health care? (with OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs)

Compiling mineral and energy resource accounts according to the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) 2012 (with OECD Environment Directorate)

English

Inequalities in longevity by education in OECD countries

Insights from new OECD estimates

This paper assesses inequality in longevity across education and gender groups in 23 OECD countries around 2011. Data on mortality rates by age, gender, educationals attainment and for, 17 countries, cause of death, were collected from national sources, with similar treatment applied to all countries in order to derive comparable measures of longevity at age 25 and 65 by gender and education. These estimates show that, on average, the gap in life expectancy between high and low-educationed people is 8 years for men and 5 years for women at age 25 years, and 3.5 years for men and 2.5 years for women at age 65. Other measures of inequalities in longevity by education (such as country averages of age-standardised mortality rates and the slope index of inequality) do not significantly change the inequality ranking of countries relative to one based on life expectancy measures. While significant, differences in longevity between groups with low and high educational attainment account, on average, for around 10% of overall differences in ages of death. Cardio-vascular diseases are the first cause of death for all gender and education groups after age 65 years, and the first cause of mortality inequality between the high and low-education elderly.

English

Keywords: inequality, longevity, health, socioeconomic gradient, cause of death, mortality, life expectancy
JEL: I18: Health, Education, and Welfare / Health / Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health; I14: Health, Education, and Welfare / Health / Health and Inequality
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