Where not to live: a geo-demographic classification of mortality for England and Wales, 1981–2000

The aim of this paper is to pilot a method for geo-demographic classification for mortality patterns in Britain. Age and sex directly standardised mortality ratios (DSMRs) for 100 grouped International Classification of Disease series 9 causes of death (ICD-9) were calculated. The 84 European Parliamentary (EP) constituencies as defined in 1999 were used as the spatial basis of this study to allow regional comparisons to be made while comparing units of similar population sizes. Scotland was excluded from the final analysis, leaving 76 regions. This paper is a preliminary investigation of the patterns of the causes of death over time and space in England and Wales using cluster analysis to summarise some of the structure in the data. Seven major and three minor cluster profiles were developed.