Inequality in mortality: measuring the contributions of various causes of death.

"Following earlier work on the decomposition of income inequality by population subgroup, a method is proposed to break down the inequality of the ages at death into three components: the contribution of the inequality of the ages at death for given causes of death; the role of the 'between causes' [of] inequality in the average ages at death; [and] an interaction term which measures the degree of overlapping between the distributions of ages at death for the various causes. An illustration based on Italian data for the period 1881-1964 is given...." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND ITA)