Although there is a saying that money cannot buy happiness, a new study in Spain indicates that being wealthy can lead to someone living for a long. Various researchers in the Epidemiology and Public Health Area (CIBERESP) of the Networking Biomedical Research Centre (CIBER-ISCII) found that wealthier people live three to four more years than poorer people.
Life expectancy related to socioeconomic status
Research drawn from the University of Granada, the National Centre of Epidemiology of the ISCII, the Andalusian School of Public Health and the Biosanitary Research Institute of Granada partnered to create the first-ever “life tables” in the country. The tables are pegged on socioeconomic levels, and the breakthrough will be instrumental in the future when studying survival rates of diseases like cancer.
The study discovered that women and men typically live approximately 3.2 to 3.8 years less than their affluent peers in the wealthiest districts of Spain after examining the association between socioeconomic status and mortality rates. In addition, researchers determined that women live 5.6 years more on average than men. Moreover, in each Spanish province, the northern part of the peninsula and the main cities often have larger life expectancies than rural areas.
The study’s authors evaluated all-cause fatalities from the 35,960 Spanish census districts compiled between 2011 and 2013. Additionally, stratification of mortality models by age group, sex, and socioeconomic status was done.
Life charts are becoming popular globally.
The team used an index the Spanish Society of Epidemiology created to arrive at some of these socioeconomic inequalities. This index used data from six key variables, mostly in the education and employment sectors, including the proportion of manual labourers (both unemployed and employed), contract employees, people without higher schooling, and those living in residential properties without internet connection.
CIBERESP researcher at Biosanity Research Institute Danie Redondo said that having comprehensive knowledge of the relation between socioeconomic situation and expectancy could aid in creating effective public health initiatives. Additionally, the life tables the researchers created are necessary in order to assess cancer-specific survival metrics by socioeconomic status.
