Changing socioeconomic inequalities in cancer incidence and mortality: Cohort study with 54 million person-years follow-up 1981–2011

Abstract

Cancer is increasingly responsible for the mortality gap between high and low socioeconomic position groups in high-income countries. This study investigates which cancers are contributing more to socioeconomic gaps in mortality and how this changes over time.New Zealand census data from 1981, 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001 and 2006, were linked to three to five years of subsequent mortality and cancer registrations, resulting in 54 and 42 million years of follow-up cancer incidence and mortality, respectively. Age- and ethnicity-standardised cancer mortality rates and the slope index of inequality (SII) by income were calculated.The contribution of cancer to absolute inequalities (SII) in mortality..