Educational level and mortality from infectious diseases

摘要

The explanation for the observed social gradient in morbidity and mortality is a subject of controversy. Whereas some authors emphasise the importance of psy-chosocial factors related with health, because they show a linear relation with individual socioeconomic status, others postulate that health inequalities are produced as a result of a differential accumulation of exposures and experiences that have their origin in objective material conditions. This debate is focused principally on chronic diseases, thus infectious diseases are implicitly excluded. Furthermore, the mechanisms by which these diseases produce inequalities are assumed to be well understood because of their strong association with absolute poverty: material conditions related to absolute poverty would increase exposure to comunicable diseases and would reduce insistence to infection. Because these assumptions have not been evaluated, even though their confirmation would be important in supporting one or the other of the theories mentioned, in this study we analyse the relation between educational level and mortality from infectious diseases.