Spatial interactions between urban areas and cause-specific mortality differentials in France

Spatial interactions constitute a challenging but promising approach for investigation of spatial mortality inequalities. Among spatial interactions measures, between-spatial unit migration differentials are a marker of socioeconomic imbalance, but also reflect discrepancies due to other factors. Specifically, this paper asks whether population exchange intensities measure differentials or similarities that are not captured by usual socioeconomic indicators. Urban areas were grouped pairwise by the intensity of connection estimated from a gravity model. The mortality differences for several causes of death were observed to be significantly smaller for strongly connected pairs than for weakly connected pairs even after adjustment on deprivation.