Socioeconomic Differences in Seasonal Mortality in the United States

Roland Rau, University of Rostock
Jutta Gampe, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Paul Eilers, Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam
Brian D. Marx, Louisiana State University

We analyze whether people from lower socioeconomic groups do not only suffer from higher mortality but are also exposed to higher seasonal fluctuations in mortality. Our hypothesis is that people of lower socioeconomic status might be more exposed to risk factors for winter excess mortality like poor housing conditions. Our analysis is based on individual death records from 1989 until 2006 published by the NCHS. The actual analysis employs a newly developed method to model seasonal fluctuations simultaneously over age and time. In our preliminary estimations we restricted ourselves to deaths from heart diseases and respiratory diseases which represent about 40% of the 41.9 million deaths which occurred in the US between 1989 and 2006. Contrasting seasonality in deaths of people with "high" and "low" education in our preliminary analysis, we could not detect any noteworthy differences in seasonality between the socioeconomic groups.