Mortality in France by départment

Knowledge of the level, structure and trends of mortality at a finer scale than that of the country as a whole is necessary both for the scholarly purpose of better understanding the factors behind the variations and inequalities observed, and for reasons of public health, in order to decide where resources are most needed and to determine what type of intervention to apply and to which parts of the territory. This paper is part of a longstanding demographic tradition (Blayo, 1970; Caselli and Egidi, 1986a and 1986b; Daguet, 2005 and 2006; Meslé and Vallin, 1998; Nizard and Prioux, 1975; Noin, 1973; Salem et al., 2000; Caselli and Vallin, 2002; Leclerc et al., 2010). Its purpose is to describe the variations in mortality between France’s départements, their evolution over the last thirty years and their structural characteristics. What is the current geography of overall mortality in metropolitan France and how has it changed over the last thirty years? Do differences in life expectancy between départements correspond to specific age patterns of mortality? What causes of death explain the geographical variations in mortality? To reduce the effect of random annual fluctuations due to small populations in some départements, we worked with three-year life tables using the arithmetic mean for a given indicator over three successive years. For simplicity, the text refers to the middle year of each three-year period. For example, life expectancy at birth in 2007 refers to the arithmetic mean of life expectancy at birth from 2006 to 2008