The longevity pattern in Emilia Romagna: a spatio-temporal analysis

In this paper, we investigate the pattern of longevity in Emilia Romagna, a North-Eastern region of Italy, at a municipality level. We consider a modified version of Centenarian Rate in two different periods. Spatio-temporal modeling is used to tackle at both periods the random variations in the occurrence of long-lived individuals, due to the rareness of such events in small areas. This method allows to exploit the spatial proximity smoothing the observed data, as well as to control for the effects of a set of regressors. As a result, clusters of areas characterized by extreme indexes of longevity are well identified and the temporal evolution of the phenomenon can be depicted. In addition, we evaluate the effects of the structure of mortality on the cohort of long-lived subjects in the second period. A spatial analysis is carried out by including the territorial patterns of mortality in a longitudinal perspective.We control for the major causes of death in order to deepen the analysis of the observed geographical differences.