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In their contributions to the debate on exceptional longevity, several scholars have noted the existence of spatial hot spots, or areas with a high concentration of individuals who have survived to very high ages (e.g. Sardinia in Italy or Okinawa in Japan). However, most of these studies were...

While regional mortality inequalities in Germany tend to be relatively stable in the short run, over the course of the past century marked changes have occurred in the country’s regional mortality patterns. These changes include not only the re-emergence of stark differences between eastern...

This study is informed by competing perspectives on family behaviour in periods of turbulent social change, and intends to provide some fresh insights into the effect of macro-level changes on micro-level processes involving the family. In this pilot study, we take our first step towards...

Until 2008, Germany’s vital statistics did not include information on the biological order of each birth. This resulted in a dearth of important demographic indicators, such as the mean age at first birth and the level of childlessness. Researchers have tried to fill this gap by generating...

Achieving old ages is also connected with prevalence of illness and long-term care. With the introduction of the statutory long-term care insurance in 1996 and the long-term care statistics in 1999 research data of about 2.3 million people receiving long-term care benefits is available. Average...

Die Untersuchung der Sterblichkeit der sozialversicherungspflichtigen Beschäftigten des Jahres 2004 deckt die Gründe für die Unterschiede der Lebenserwartung bei Männern im Ost-West-Vergleich auf. Es wird gezeigt, dass die bestehenden strukturellen Unterschiede des Arbeitsmarktes in Ost- und...

The main purpose of this paper is to report on an initial validation of methods for dealing with micro-census data with no delineated households. After describing the 1819 census of Rostock we test the possibilities of using an algorithm that creates households according to a strictly defined...

German unification can be seen as a natural experiment that allows us to study the health effects of political and economic transition. This study examined old-age survival following German unification in cohorts born in 1895, 1900, 1905 and 1910. People born in these years were in their 80s and...

Using data from Germany, we examine if month of birth influences survival up to age 105. Since age reporting at the highest ages is notoriously unreliable we draw on age-validated information from a huge age validation project of 1487 alleged German semi-supercentenarians aged 105+. We use month...