Regional cause-of-death mortality in Spain in 1960 and 1970: A multivariate analysis and tentative explanations

Jeroen JA Spijker, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Amand Blanes

Our study seeks to disentangle the regional mortality differences in 1960 and 1970, and in particular differences in cause-specific mortality, as this has not been done before for Spain for these two periods. We attempt to link the established regional mortality differences with a selection of exogenous variables, including regional gross domestic product, proportion of industrial workers and illiterates, and sanitary conditions. These variables were considered to have potential explanatory value because, while Spain underwent large economic changes during the 1960s and improvements were made in education and public health, large regional differences still remained in economic, social and sanitary conditions. It was perhaps therefore that in 1960 and 1970 sanitary conditions explained part of the regional differences in mortality from tuberculosis, even though absolute levels in Spain as a whole were quite low (27 and 11 per population of 100,000 in 1960 and 1970, respectively for the total population).