Social Inequalities in Mortality

Social Inequalities in Mortality

The increasing advantage of the married
Download Population & Policy Compact 16/2018 (783.74 KB)
Key Messages Married individuals live longer than the non-married, and in Norway and some other countries, this mortality gap has become larger over recent decades. Among the never-married in Norway, mortality did not fall over the last decades of the 20th century, and in 2005-08, mortality was as high for them as it was for the married three decades earlier.

It is widely known that better educated persons tend to live longer than the less educated. There is apparently less public and political awareness of the fact that marital status is also strongly associated with mortality. Yet, hundreds of studies carried out over more than 150 years have shown that those who are married have better health and live longer than those who are never-married, divorced or widowed. In combination with the large proportion of non-married in European countries, and the likely future increase, such a gap in health and mortality between married and non-married persons may be seen as a major public health challenge. The situation will be particularly worrying if the mortality disadvantage of the non-married increases, as it has done over recent decades in several countries.

Person: Kravdal
Kravdal
Øystein
Family and Children
Fertility
Health
Socio-economic Resources of One Partner are Related to Health Status of the Other Partner

Socio-economic Resources of One Partner are Related to Health Status of the Other Partner

Inequalities in health are not only caused by biological determinants, but also by social determinants like income or education. One’s own socio-economic position has been shown to often be an important predictor for health and mortality. A recently published article by Jenny Torssander, Heta Moustgaard, Riina Peltonen, Fanny Kilpi and Pekka Martikainen sheds further light on the assumption that not only someone’s own resources affect health and mortality, but the resources of the partner one lives with also play a role.
The Future of Demography: How to Promote an “Interdiscipline"

The Future of Demography: How to Promote an “Interdiscipline"

Population Europe organised the session The Future of Demography. How to promote an “Interdiscipline” at the 2018 European Population Conference in Brussels.

Population Europe organised the session The Future of Demography. How to promote an “Interdiscipline” at the 2018 European Population Conference in Brussels. Chaired by Andreas Edel (Population Europe), the panellists were Agnieszka Chłoń-Domińczak (Warsaw School of Economics),  Jane Falkingham (Centre for Population Change, University of Southampton), Wolfgang Lutz (Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital), Livia Oláh (Stockholm University, Department of Sociology), Lionel Thelen (European Research Council Executive Agency) and Emilio Zagheni (University of Washington / Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research).

News: The 2019 "Population" Young Author Prize

The 2019 "Population" Young Author Prize

Who is eligible to compete? Students enrolled in PhD or Master’s programs Young researchers who have defended their PhD thesis in the last seven years   What types of paper are eligible to compete? Papers written under the researcher’s own name Papers co-authored by two or more young researchers Papers that comply with the journal’s editorial rules Papers written in English or in French   What are the key dates to remember?  
Books and Reports: Population Europe Report of Activities 2009-2018

Population Europe Report of Activities 2009-2018

In his treatise on Metaphysics, Aristotle, a pioneer in the studying life expectancy and demography more generally, pointed out that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This idea also applies to Population Europe, the network of Europe’s leading demographic research centres: In joining forces, the partner institutes are able to address a much broader regional and thematic scope in their policy dialogue activities, publications and other outreach materials than a single institute could do alone.
Event: The Future of Demography: How to Promote an “Interdiscipline”

The Future of Demography: How to Promote an “Interdiscipline”

Fri Jun 8
Demography is a discipline which is somehow fixed in a Procrustean bed: At many universities, it is subsumed into other academic subjects (such as sociology, economics, geography), thus often exposed to risks of budget cuts and staff shortages; while on the other side, the often small group of demographers in a department is stretched to cover a broad range of population developments. How can demography as an “interdiscipline” be better promoted? Should we put stronger emphasis on building our own corpus of population theory, as suggested by leading researchers?
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