Death in England and Wales: Using a classificatory approach for researching mortality

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how useful a classificatory research approach can be to researching mortality patterns. This is conducted through creating an area classification of small area mortality patterns for England and Wales (2006 to 2009). The resulting area classification is then applied to research the existence of area effects on health, to assess how useful it is as an analytical tool.

To successfully achieve this, the thesis begins through reviewing the literature to examine the importance of taking an area perspective to researching mortality. This
was extended to assess the extent of which an area classification could build upon past research. Data and methodology issues were discussed, to evaluate the best approach required to building a high quality and relevant area classification. The area classification was built and statistical testing was conducted to assess the stability of it.

The area classification was then interpreted to examine the main mortality patterns that dominant England and Wales. Explanations for the clusters were derived from demographic, social and geographical factors. The area classification was then analysed to explore the existence of area effects through a multi-level analysis. This was extended to examine the impact on health as people migrated between the clusters, exploring whether area effects were observed. Benchmarking of these results was performed, comparing it to using GORs instead to group the data, to evaluate how
useful the results were.