Old-age mortality in Israel: analysis of variation and change*

This study analyses differentials in life expectancy and cause-specific death rates among the elderly Jewish population in Israel in the early 1970s and early 1980s. We find substantial inequality in old-age mortality levels across subpopulations in geographic units and show that this inequality increased between the two periods. Much of the variation in old-age mortality is explained by differences in economic and social status, ethnicity and religiosity. The importance of religiosity is of particular interest in the context of Israeli society. Inequalities in longevity across population subgroups characterize every society. This study analyses such differentials in life expectancy and cause-specific death rates among the elderly Jewish population in Israel. It covers a period of five years around the 1983 census, with comparisons to a similar period around the 1972 census. The analysis is restricted to the Jewish population because the socio-economic and cultural characteristics, as well as the quality of data, differ greatly between the Jewish and the Arab populations. Indeed, the quality of vital records as well as census data of the Arab population is problematic and raise