Identifying patterns of main causes of death in the young EU population

Abstract

The study of mortality patterns is a popular research topic in many areas. We are particularly interested in mortality patterns among main causes of death associated with age-gender combinations. We use symbolic data analysis (SDA) and include three dimensions: age, gender, and patterns across main causes of death. In this study, we present an alternative method to identify clusters of EU countries with similar mortality patterns in the young population, while considering comprehensive information on the distribution of deaths among the main causes of death by different age-gender groups. We explore possible relationships between mortality patterns in the identified clusters and some other sociodemographic indicators. We use EU data of crude mortality rates from 2016, as the most recent complete data available.