SHORT REPORT Shrinking areas and mortality: an artefact of deprivation effects?

There is evidence that mortality rates are highest in areas that are experiencing population decline, and researchers have recommended that this should be accounted for in health resource allocation. This research finds a significant negative association between population change and mortality for small areas in Scotland, which remains when low social class is accounted for. However, this relation disappears when the area deprivation is accounted for. It is suggested that it is more important to account for deprivation than population change in health resource allocation. R esearch into the association between mortality and population change has a long history,1 but more recently Davey Smith et al2 examined the relation between population change (1971–91) and mortality (1990–92) fo