Decomposing the Differences in Cancer Mortality between Denmark and Sweden

Cancer survival tends to be lower in Denmark than in comparable countries like Sweden. It has been suggested that this difference can be partly explained by higher tobacco use by Danes than Swedes and a more adverse stage at diagnosis distribution. In this paper, we aim to decompose the difference in cancer mortality between Denmark and Sweden by their differences in 1) age composition at diagnosis, 2) stage composition at diagnosis and 3) the force of mortality by age and stage. This procedure allows quantification of the contribution of each of these factors to the overall difference in cancer mortality. Preliminary results suggest that diagnosis at a later stage could be the only reason why Danes suffer higher mortality from breast cancer. Later stage diagnosis explains 37% of the difference in mortality from lung cancer. Higher mortality from lung cancer is observed at each stage in Denmark, compared to Sweden.