Mortality in midlife for subgroups in Germany

Peter Haan, Anna Hammerschmid and Julia Schmieder

The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, 2019, vol. 14, issue C

Abstract: Case and Deaton (2015) document that, since 1998, midlife mortality rates are increasing for white non-Hispanics in the US. This trend is driven by deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related diseases, termed as deaths of despair, and by the subgroup of low-educated individuals. In contrast, average mortality for middle-aged men and women continued to decrease in several other high-income countries including Germany. However, average mortality rates can disguise important differences between subgroups and the phenomenon of increasing mortality rates might also be present for subpopulations in these countries. Hence, we analyze how mortality in midlife is changing for several important demographic subgroups in Germany over the 1990–2015 period with a focus on deaths of despair. Our results show a very clear pattern: We find that mortality rates declined between 1990 and 2015, with no increases in deaths of despair for any of the subgroups. Thus, our findings starkly contrast with those for the US.

Keywords: Mortality; Lifetime inequality; Causes of death; Deaths of despair; Germany; I10; I14; J11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212828X18300550

Related works:
Journal Article: Mortality in midlife for subgroups in Germany (2019)
Working Paper: Mortality in Midlife for Subgroups in Germany (2019)
Working Paper: Mortality in Midlife for Subgroups in Germany (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joecag:v:14:y:2019:i:c:s2212828x18300550

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeoa.2018.12.001

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of the Economics of Ageing is currently edited by D.E. Bloom, A. Sousa-Poza and U. Sunde

More articles in The Journal of the Economics of Ageing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().