Parental income gradients in child and adolescent mortality: Norwegian trends over half a century

Child mortality has declined rapidly over the last century in many high-income countries. However, little is known about the socio-economic differences in this decline and whether these vary across causes of death.

We used register data that included all Norwegian births between 1968 and 2010 (2.1 million), and we analysed how all-cause and cause-specific child (0-4 years) and adolescent (5-20 years) mortality rates vary with relative parental income the year before the birth.

Child and adolescent all-cause mortality decreased with increasing parental relative income within all birth cohorts. Among children aged 0-4 years, the socio-economic gradient in all-cause mortality and in mortality due to external causes, sudden infant deaths and perinatal factors declined over the period, while there was no systematic decline in mortality from congenital malformations. Among children aged 5-20 years, the gradient did not weaken similarly, although there were indications of declines in the socio-economic gradient related to all-cause deaths and deaths because of suicides and other external causes. While the absolute differences in mortality declined over time, the relative differences remained stable.

Although children of low-income parents still have elevated mortality, there has been a large reduction in child mortality in all socio-economic groups across 50 years for all causes combined and most of the groups of specific causes of death.