Social determinants of life expectancy at birth in the city of Madrid: a pre-pandemic analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this article was to analyze the relationship of socioeconomic and educational determinants on life expectancy at birth in the 21 districts of the city of Madrid in 2019. An ecological and cross-sectional study was conducted. The independent variables studied were economic situation, educational level and being a user of public social resources for family care in the city of Madrid. Mean comparison, correlation and multivariate linear regression analysis were performed with the aim of estimating the relationship between these variables and life expectancy at birth in the districts of Madrid. The results show evidence of how the social determinants analyzed by district obtained high levels of association and predictive capacity with respect to life expectancy at birth in Madrid. In this sense, the regression model was able to explain 80.2% of the variance of life expectancy at birth. The study shows that socioeconomic determinants are associated and linearly related to life expectancy in periods prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in the city of Madrid. These results indicate that health policy planning should address social determinants as a starting point to reduce health inequalities and, therefore, to achieve actions aimed at improving the health of all citizens.