Inequality in life expectancy in Hungary: People may live for up to 6 years less in poor settlements
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According to a recent Hungarian study, living in the poorest settlements can mean a 5-7 years shorter life expectancy compared to the inhabitants of the wealthiest regions. The disadvantages of poor people manifest themselves in the areas of avoidable causes of death and access to healthcare services. Additionally, inequality in life expectancy across different income groups has increased since the 1990s in Hungary.
Higher incomes are generally associated with higher life expectancy; however, this correlation is affected by several factors. In The Role of Place and Income in Life Expectancy Inequality: Evidence from Hungary, Hungarian researchers of the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies have examined mortality data, settlement-level income and population to provide a detailed analysis of the income-related geographic inequalities in life expectancy, Index reported.
The methods and analytic approaches
The authors wanted to focus on the lifespan of adults, so they chose the age 45 and measured life expectancy by gender and age for each settlement in Hungary between 1991 and 2016. They determined three time periods (1991−1996, 2001−2006, and 2011−2016), then grouped Hungarian settlements into 20 categories based on the income of the population. The inhabitants of the poorest villages and towns were at the bottom of the scale while the citizens of the richest settlements were at the top. The study also distinguishes between avoidable and unavoidable deaths based on the cause of death.
The researchers told Index that
this is the first study in Hungary that examined life expectancy inequality by income and type of death, especially over a long time period.
The ever-widening gap
The results of the 2011−2016 period suggest that there are considerable inequalities in life expectancy at age 45 across the settlement groups.