The increasing risk of mortality in breast cancer: A socioeconomic analysis between countries

Abstract

Abstract. The risk of mortality in breast cancer among women is a critical health issue worldwide. Scholars argue that breast cancer mortality rates have decreased in many advanced countries overall. However, about 50% of world population in 2017 was in poor and developing countries (more than 3,652 million with 50.24% female) and breast cancer mortality rates differ among nations also because of socioeconomic factors. This study investigates, at global level, breast cancer mortality in association with breast cancer incidence and some factors of socioeconomic ecosystem between poor and rich countries, to explain trends that can be used to gain insights into country-level “best practices” for health improvement. Global data regarding breast cancer incidence and mortality as the age standardized rate per 100,000 population in 78low-to-middle income countries (LMICs), 50 upper-to-middle-income countries (UMICs) and 63 high income countries (HCIs) were obtained from IARC/WHO for 2012 and 2018. Data regarding GDP per capita, population and mammography (MMG) were obtained from World Bank, United Nations and WHO. Data, transformed in log scale to have normal distribution, were analyzed with descriptive statistics, partial correlation, regression analyses and paired-Samples T Test procedure to assess the statistical significance of increase or decrease of mortality and incidence in breast cancer from 2012 to 2018.Results reveal that a 1% higher level of breast cancer incidence, increases the expected mortality by 0.79% (p-value < .001) in LMICs, by 0.50% (p-value <.001) in UMICs and by 0.31% (p-value < .008) in HICs. These results, confirmed by other analyses here, seem to suggest that breast cancer mortality is increasing over time worldwide in rich and in particular developing countries. The global analysis here reveals that though an improvement of wealth and wellbeing worldwide, the risk of incidence and mortality in breast cancer is increasing. This result suggests that situational factors in the ecosystem of countries support the growing increase and mortality of breast cancer that improvement in healthcare and medicine of the last 40 years are not been sufficient to slowdown. These conclusions need for much more detailed research to investigate into the interaction between factors of socioeconomic systems, health improvement, and breast cancer causes.

Keywords. Breast cancer, Wealth of nations, Epidemiology.

JEL. I14, I15, I18, I39, O10, O3, O55, Q50.