Addressing ethnic and socio-economic inequalities in child mortality in the UK

Abstract

In The Lancet Public Health, Isobel Ward and colleagues¹ used linked longitudinal data for 3 million children born in England and Wales to assess ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in neonatal and child deaths. By linking census data and birth and death registrations over a 10-year period, they constructed birth cohorts and used rich census data to evaluate inequalities in mortality in the neonatal period and for children (>28 days to 10 years) based on ethnicity, maternal education, and occupational social class. They explored how these relationships are attenuated after adjusting for potential mediators of these inequalities such as household, maternal, and birth characteristics.