The Growing Divide: How Cohort Processes Affect Educational Differences in Black and White U.S. Mortality Risk

Ryan K. Masters, University of Texas at Austin
Mark D. Hayward, University of Texas at Austin

Educational differences in U.S. adult mortality risk have been widely studied in population sciences. However, only minimal attention has been given to the ways by which the education-mortality relationship has changed, and continues to change, across time. In this paper we examine age, period, and cohort patterns of educational differences in U.S. adult mortality risk for non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white male and female populations during the time period 1986 to 2007. We employ recently developed hierarchical age-period-cohort (HAPC) cross-classified random effects models (CCREM) to simultaneously examine age, period, and cohort patterns of educational differences in all-cause, heart disease, and non-lung cancer U.S. adult mortality risk. Analyses are stratified by sex and race/ethnicity to illustrate (1) how educational gradients in mortality risk differ for U.S. non-Hispanic black and non-Hispanic white men and women, and (2) how the different gradients are changing across cohorts.