You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

Research report
The social patterning of deaths due to assault in Scotland, 1980–2005: population-based study
  1. A H Leyland,
  2. R Dundas
  1. MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, Glasgow, UK
  1. Correspondence to Alastair H Leyland, MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, 4 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, UK; a.leyland{at}sphsu.mrc.ac.uk

Abstract

Objectives The objectives of this study were to explore the extent of the social gradient for deaths due to assault and its impact on overall inequalities in mortality and to investigate the contribution to assault mortality of knives and other sharp weapons.

Design An analysis of death records and contemporaneous population estimates was conducted.

Setting The authors investigated the social patterning of homicide in Scotland.

Participants This study included deaths between 1980 and 2005 due to assault.

Main measurements Death rates were standardised to the European standard population. Time trends were analysed and inequalities were assessed, using rate ratios and the slope index of inequality, along axes defined by individual occupational socioeconomic status and area deprivation.

Results An increase in mortality due to assault was most pronounced at ages 15–44 and was steeper among assaults involving knives. The death rate among men in routine occupations aged 20–59 was nearly 12 times that of those in higher managerial and professional occupations. Men under 65 living in the most deprived quintile of areas had a death rate due to assault 31.9 times (95% CI 13.1 to 77.9) that of those living in the least deprived quintile; for women, this ratio was 35.0 (4.8 to 256.2). Despite comprising just 3.2% of all male deaths between 15 and 44 years, assault accounted for 6.4% of the inequalities in mortality.

Conclusions Inequalities in mortality due to assault in Scotland exceed those in other countries and are greater than for other causes of death in Scotland. Reducing mortality and inequalities depends on addressing the problems of deprivation as well as targeting known contributors, such as alcohol use, the carrying of knives and gang culture.

  • Deprivation
  • homicide
  • inequalities SI
  • mortality SI
  • socioeconomic

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode.

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2009.095018

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Funding The Social and Public Health Sciences Unit is jointly funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) of the Scottish Government Health Directorates. This work was funded by the Chief Scientist Office as part of the “Measuring health, variations in health and the determinants of health” programme, wbs U.1300.00.001. Neither the MRC nor the CSO had any role in study design, analysis or the interpretation of the results.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Ethical approval This study was based on the analysis of anonymised mortality data and as such did not require ethical approval.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.