Combined social factors linked to death risk in older Brazilians
Differences between groups defined by sex, race or skin color, education and income accounted for 7% of mortality variation in an unadjusted model.
Limit: Starting at 50 years excludes early deaths disproportionately affecting non-white people, potentially understating racial inequalities
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
A prospective observational cohort study followed 8,918 Brazilian adults aged 50 or older between 2015 and 2021. Researchers grouped participants into 32 categories combining sex, self-reported race or skin color, education and household income per person. They linked participants’ records to Brazil’s mortality records. During a median follow-up of 4.8 years, 817 participants died.
After accounting for age, health, behavior and other factors, some groups of women with one to four years of education still had higher death risk than the model expected. Some groups of high-income non-white men had lower risk than expected. These included men with no formal education and men with five to ten years of education.
Why it matters
The authors called for policies addressing the social structures behind unequal mortality in later life, rather than considering each social disadvantage separately.
Caveats
This observational study identified associations, not causes. It excluded 494 people with missing social-factor data, and its findings concern Brazilian adults aged 50 or older.
From the paper
- Follow-up
The final sample of 8,918 participants had a median follow-up period of 4.8 years (interquartile range: 4.1-5.4 years).
- Result
… but presented a statistically significant association as protective factors in the frailty model (FHR = 0.82; 95% confidence interval - 95%CI: 0.72-0.93 for rural area), although with overlap of the confidence intervals between the estimates (HR and FHR).
Quoted word for word from the full text on PubMed Central.
The paper
Intersectionality in the mortality of Brazilians aged 50 years or older: analysis of ELSI-Brasil
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz
Cadernos de Saude Publica, Oct 12, 2026, Open access
