Characteristics of urban regions and all-cause mortality in working-age population

Using Finnish register data on individuals linked to information on urban regions, this study aimed to estimate the effects of some regional characteristics on all-cause mortality among working-age population in 1995-2001, and to find out whether these effects are different among those long-term unemployed than among others. Multilevel Poisson regression models were used. The characteristics of regions included unemployment rate, level of urbanisation, voting turnout, a summary measure of family cohesion, and the geographic location of the region. Our study showed that effects of most area characteristics on mortality were clear among those who suffered from long-term unemployment in the baseline but not among others, adjusting for basic socio-demographic characteristics of the individuals. The results thus suggest that the weaker in the society are more vulnerable to the effects of social environment than those better off.