Income Inequality and Mortality: A Norwegian Perspective

Abstract

While Norway has experienced income growth accompanied by a large decline in mortality during the past several decades, little is known about the distribution of these improvements in longevity across the income distribution. Using municipality level income and mortality data, we show that the stark income gradient in infant mortality across municipalities in the 1950s mostly closed in the late 1960s. However, the income gradient in mortality for older age categories across municipalities persisted until 2010 and only flattened thereafter. Further, the infant mortality gap between rich and poor Norwegian families based on individual-level data persisted several decades longer than the gap between rich and poor municipalities and only finally closed in the early 21st century.