Exploring mortality data in homogeneous risk regions

Although the trend of increasing life expectancy is clearly evident in the last century, large disparities in health and mortality conditions still exist between geographical regions in the same country. In this paper we deal with the analysis of different patterns of mortality trends in Italian Provinces aggregated according to similar environmental conditions. Current literature ascertains the relationship between air pollutants concentration with specific causes of death. Several studies show how these pollutants concentrate in urban and highly industrialized areas. However a clear classification of the Italian territory according to homogeneous environmental conditions is hard to be defined. We will consider different studies providing different criteria to classify Italian areas according to their exposure to environmental risk. From a methodological perspective, we consider mortality data addressed by the Lee- Carter model extended to a Three-Way Data structure. As a general purpose we wish to propose a framework where different geographical regions can be analyzed in order to establish peculiar mortality tables for homogeneous areas.