Mortality and life expectancy trends in Spain by pension income level for male pensioners in the general regime retiring at the statutory age, 2005-2018

Abstract Background Research has generally found a significant inverse relationship in mortality risk across socioeconomic (SE) groups. This paper focuses on Spain, a country for which there continues to be very little evidence available concerning retirement pensioners. We draw on the Continuous Sample of Working Lives (CSWL) to investigate disparities in SE mortality among retired men aged 65 and above over the longest possible period covered by this data source: 2005–2018. We use the initial pension income (PI) level as our single indicator of the SE status of the retired population. Methods The mortality gradient by income is quantified in two ways: via an indicator referred to as “rela…