US regional and national cause-specific mortality and trends in income inequality: descriptive findings

We examined the concordance of income inequality trends with 30-year US regional trends in cause-specific mortality and 100-year trends in heart disease and infant mortality. The evidence suggests that any effects of income inequality on population health trends cannot be reduced to simple processes that operate across all contexts and in all time periods. If income inequality does indeed drive population health, it implies that income inequality would have to be linked and de-linked across different time periods, with different exposures to generate the observed heterogeneous trends and levels in the causes of mortality shown here.