Findings Series 43 - Influences on mortality

This briefing paper summarises the results of a recently completed PhD research project which examined the underlying historical, political and economic influences on mortality in West Central Scotland (WCS) and four other post-industrial regions across Europe (in Germany, France, Poland and the Czech Republic).

The project followed on from analyses published in 2008 which showed that mortality rates were higher, and improving more slowly, in WCS compared with a large number of comparably deindustrialised European regions.

Deindustrialisation is recognised as an underlying cause of poor population health, and therefore it was important to understand the reasons for this disparity across similar post-industrial regions. The project findings suggest that a number of factors were potentially important in making deindustrialisation relatively more damaging in WCS compared with the other regions analysed.