The neighborhood-by-neighborhood mortality map in Spain reveals huge inequalities even on the same street
5/06/2025As a result of the MEDEA3 project, the Mortality Atlas has just been published showing the main results of the research project "Socioeconomic and environmental inequalities in the geographical distribution of mortality in large cities in Spain (1996-2015): MEDEA3" (Original Title: "Desigualdades socioeconómicas y medioambientales en la distribución geográfica de la mortalidad en grandes ciudades de España (1996-2015): MEDEA3"). The main objective of the project is the study of the geographical distribution of mortality in large Spanish cities. Specifically, the new national atlas, with data from the period 1996-2015, contains information on the risk of death from different causes (15 causes) in 26 Spanish cities.
In general, there is a significant gradient in the sense that the most disadvantaged areas are those with the most deaths from all causes. The authors find less consistent relationships in the case of women. Furthermore, they cannot conclude that environmental inequalities are as important as socioeconomic inequalities in explaining differences in mortality.
The newspaper "El País" publishes an interactive map in which you can consult, for each census tract of the city, the risk of mortality for the causes studied: