| Abstract | | Aim. To study biological (sex and age), socioeconomic (marital status, education, occupation, and mother tongue) and geographical (region) factors connected with causes of death, and lifespan (age at death, and mortality rate) in Slovenia in the 1990s Methods. The study was population-based cross-sectional study. Analysis focused on all deaths in the 25-64 age group (N=14,816) in Slovenia in 1992, 1995 and 1998. Diagnoses of cause of death were linked to data on the deceased from the 1991 Census. Causes of death were classified into groups according to the ICD-10. Stratified contingency-table analyses were performed. Poisson regression was applied to test differences in mortality rate. Results. Men died younger across all socioeconomic strata than women (index of their excess mortality exceeds 200 for all the studied years) and from different prevailing causes (particularly at age below 45 from injuries; neoplasms dominated for women after age 35). For men, higher education was associated with fewer deaths due to digestive system and respiratory system diseases, while the least educated women died relatively frequently of circulatory diseases and seldom of neoplasms. Single people of both sexes died less frequently because of neoplasms. Marriage as compared to divorce reduced the mortality rate about 1.9 times for both sexes (P<0.001). Mortality rate of men and women decreased from unfinished elementary school to university degree about four-fold (P<0.001). Mortality rate among ethnic Slovenians was over twice lower than among ethnic minority members and immigrants (P<0.001). Share of neoplasms was the highest in the cluster of prosperous regions, while that of circulatory diseases was elevated in regions with poorer socioeconomic conditions. Significant differences were found between individual regions regarding age at death and mortality rate, and the differences decreased over the studied period. (Abstract truncated at 2000 characters)
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