Educational differences in chronic conditions and their role in the educational differences in overall mortality

Demographers use different models to decompose the prevalence of given health conditions. This article discusses how these models can help us understand the ways in which these conditions affect overall mortality. In particular, this framework can be used to understand the role that any given condition plays in producing differences in overall mortality across populations. The empirical analysis in this study focuses on chronic conditions as factors behind elderly US citizens’ differences in overall mortality across educational levels. The analysis of differences by education level shows that while the prevalence differences of chronic conditions is mostly the outcome of incidence differences, regarding overall mortality differences, the role of chronic conditions is equally channelled through incidence and excess mortality differences.