sustained elevated mortality in the middle adult ages and that of females by a sharp peak at ages 15-19, especially for rural females.
Differentials in rural and urban mortality are also marked in Russia. Rural males have a life expectancy at birth 2.6 years less than that of urban males, and rural females have a life expectancy 1 year less than that of urban females. The differential between rural and urban areas due to deaths from injuries and neoplasm is large. Rural areas overwhelmingly and consistently have higher mortality rates due to injury, by a substantial margin. For males, rural morality rates due to injury are on average 38 percent higher than in urban areas, and for females 28 percent higher. Neoplasm demonstrates the opposite pattern. Urban rates are on average 12 percent higher for males and 23 percent higher for females than rural rates. The differential between rural and urban areas for cardiovascular disease is much smaller and more complex. On average, however, cardiovascular disease rates are higher in rural areas (5 percent higher for males and 3 percent for females).
Regional variation in mortality is large in the sense of absolute range in life expectancy, but relative variation among provinces is fairly small. The majority of provinces have relatively similar levels of life expectancy. In general, the Northern and Northwestern regions in the north of European Russia, the northern part of the Ural region, a large part of Siberia, and the Far East include the areas with the lowest life expectancies. However, patterns of cause of death within these regions are extremely diverse. Provincial variation within regions is also substantial. For example, in the Far Eastern region, cause-specific mortality rates are generally high from injury, cardiovascular disease, and neoplasm, but are less extreme for rural males than for others. In Eastern Siberia, high rates of injury are found in all four subpopulations, but very low rates of mortality from cardiovascular disease are found among males and moderately high rates among rural females. In the northern Ural region, there are high levels of injury, but generally lower rates of cardiovascular disease and neoplasm. In the Northern region, there are high rates of cardiovascular disease and moderate to low rates of injury.
Age patterns of mortality associated with each of these causes are fairly different. Consequently, the variation in age patterns of mortality across Russia does not correspond well to regional differences in level. Rather, the most outstanding feature of those patterns is their largely rural or urban character. The classification of provincial life tables into numerous clusters representing typical age patterns of mortality results in largely urban or rural clusters. This indicates that the difference in the shape of the mortality curves of these two populations is principal and significant, and that any mortality profile for Russia must contain some code that distinguishes urban from rural mortality.
The shape of the age patterns of mortality simplifies the spatial variation in mortality across Russia into predominant patterns. Within Russia, classification of provincial life tables into typical patterns results in one major urban cluster and two rural clusters for males and one major urban and one major rural cluster for