Study on Health inequalities associated to socioeconomic factors in pre-COVID19 pandemic published on the Lancet

The “Subnational inequalities in years of life lost and associations with socioeconomic factors in pre-pandemic Europe, 2009 – 19: and ecological study.” has as first author Doctor José Chen-Xu, researcher from CHRC. The study was active for 10 years and it aimed to investigate the health inequalities related to subnational geographical inequalities in all-cause years of life lost (YLLs) and the association between YLLs and socioeconomic factors, such as household income, risk of poverty, and educational attainment, in countries within the European Economic Area before the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the 10 year study, it was extracted demographic and socieconomic data from Eurostat for 1390 small regions and 285 basic regions from 32 countries in the European Economic Area. 

“Geographical inequalities were assessed using the Gini coefficient and slope index of inequality. Socioeconomic inequalities were assessed by investigating the association between socioeconomic factors (educational attainment, household income, and risk of poverty) and YLLs in 2019 using negative binomial mixed models.”

The data shows that the all-cause years of life lost lowered in almost all subnational regions, related to the lowest levels of educational attainment, household income and also with the highest poverty risk. Relative geographical inequalities in YLLs were highest in the UK relatively to woman and in Belgium among man. 

The general conclusion shows that the diferences in YLLS are associated with socieconomic factors. This data will be used as evidence to encourage the stakeholders in addressing health inequities to improve overall disease burden within the European Economic Area.

Access to the full publication on https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(24)00004-5/fulltext#%20