Exploring life expectancy and its social determinants in China: Enlightenment from a spatial and temporal framework

Social determinants of health (SDoH) incorporate the multiple social processes that shape living environments and produce a vast difference in public health conditions.1 Notably, the close associations between SDoH and life expectancy (LE) have been widely measured and identified,2 indicating that SDoH is one of the most critical factors affecting LE.3 Although there has been a constancy of LE increments in China over the past decades, marked spatial variations can be seen.4 Therefore, there are still two obstacles to revealing LE-related SDoH in China.