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The Structural Determinants of Mortality in Japanese Prefectures
Author(s) -
Young Frank W.,
Minai Keiko
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
international journal of japanese sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.133
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1475-6781
pISSN - 0918-7545
DOI - 10.1111/1475-6781.00006
Subject(s) - spurious relationship , multivariate statistics , demography , multivariate analysis , pluralism (philosophy) , mortality rate , sociology , statistics , mathematics , philosophy , epistemology
This cross‐sectional multivariate analysis of age‐ and sex‐standardized mortality for the 47 Japanese prefectures explores and tests the hypotheses that structural pluralism and differentiation, interpreted as dimensions of “social problem solving capacity”, determine lower mortality rates, controlling on the availability of medical facilities. The postulated explanatory principle is that participation in community problem‐solving optimizes the biological functioning of the residents, which fosters better health. A factor analysis generated two factors (plus a third index of medical facilities) that measure the structural dimensions. Regression analysis showed that pluralism predicted lower mortality for both males and females, but differentiation gave contradictory results. Surprisingly, medical facilities predicted higher male mortality. A control on the more recently industrialized and the hyper‐urbanized prefectures refined the analysis so that the differentiation factor predicted consistently and the spurious correlation between medical facilities and male mortality dissolved.