Objectives

Main objective

To describe the evolution of socio-economic and environmental inequalities in mortality in geographical areas within cities in Spain.

Specific objectives

Trends in socio-economic inequalities

• To elaborate a composite index of socio-economic level capable of capturing gender inequalities.
• To describe the evolution of mortality inequalities in geographical areas within cities in Spain between the two periods 1996-2001, and 2002-2007, taking gender-related inequalities into account.
• To analyse the relationship between mortality indicators in small geographical areas and socio-economic indicators in two time periods, taking gender-related inequalities into account.

Trends in environmental inequalities

• To describe the spatial distributions of atmospheric pollution and exposure to motor-vehicle traffic in geographical areas within cities of Spain and their evolution between the two periods 1996-2001 and 2002-2007.
• To analyse the relationship between environmental variables – atmospheric pollution, proximity to roads and proximity to contaminating industries –and mortality by census tracts.
• To examine the role of the following variables: sex, age and socio-economic level as modifiers of the effects of environmental variables on mortality.
• To study the possible interaction and effect-modification phenomena involving exposure to industry and socio-economic indicators.

Spatio-temporal modelling

• To obtain, for the period 1996-2007, a visualisation of the spatio-temporal evolution of mortality in the cities participating in the project, by year.
• To explore possible lines of methodological improvement in spatio-temporal modelling of risks, based on the model tried out for AIDS in the city of Valencia in the MEDEA I project.