XXXX mortality by educational level in Italy.

@entity1 @entity788 @entity5 @entity204 @entity320
Social differences in health concern both ethics and science. From a public health point-of-view, one must assess actual differences and then try to find explanations. This was made possible for the first time for @entity5 in Italy via nationwide record-linkage between the 1981 census and the national death index. Over the subsequent six months after census, the study-base included 31,000 @entity204 for @entity5 and 18 million @entity1 -years at risk. Rate ratio (RR) were estimated through a Poisson regression model adjusted by age and geographic area of residence. Educational level was used as social level indicator. Profound social differences were evident for buccal cavity (RR = 3.10 for lowest cf highest educational level), esophagus (RR = 3.00), stomach (RR = 3.43), and larynx (RR = 3.30) among @entity1 , and for stomach (RR = 2.25) and uterus (RR = 1.76) among @entity1 . Colon (RR = 0.62) and @entity788 (RR = 0.65) presented an inverse relationship among @entity1 , as did colon (RR = 0.37), breast (RR = 0.56), ovary (RR = 0.45), and @entity320 (RR = 0.62) among @entity1 . In conclusion, the Italian population at the beginning of the 1980s had large social differences in the risk of dying from @entity5 , confirming the patterns commonly found in such other countries as Great Britain, France, and New Zealand. Some dissimilarities, useful for hypothesis generation on the mechanisms of inequality, were evident, such as the generally highest social differences found among northern Italian @entity1 and among southern Italian @entity1 .
