Trends in Life Expectancy by Level of Education and Occupational Social Class in Finland 1981-2000

Authors

• Tapani Valkonen
• Pekka Martikainen

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23979/fypr.45025

Keywords:

life expectancy, education, occupational social class, public health, morality, Finland

Abstract

The study analyses trends in life expectancy by level of education and by occupational
social class in Finland from 1981 to 2000 to assess to what extent these trends have been
in accordance with the target of reducing socioeconomic differences in life expectancy
set in the Government public health programme. The study is based on the census
records for the population aged 35 or over, which have been linked to the death records
for the years 1981 to 2000. The results show that, contrary to the public health target,
the difference in the life expectancy between persons with tertiary and basic education
and that between upper non-manual and manual occupational classes increased
during the 1990s. Differences in the trends in mortality from alcohol-related causes of
death and from other cancers than lung cancer accounted for most the increase in the
socioeconomic gap among men. Different from the 1980s changes in cardiovascular
mortality did not contribute to the increase in the socioeconomic gap. Among women
the increase in the socioeconomic gap was mainly due to the heterogeneous group of
other diseases and cancers other than lung and breast cancer