The importance of regional availability of health care for old age survival - Findings from German reunification.

dc.contributor.author

Vogt, Tobias C

dc.contributor.author

Vaupel, James W

dc.coverage.spatial

England

dc.date.accessioned

2017-06-01T18:18:30Z

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2017-06-01T18:18:30Z

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2015

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BACKGROUND: This article investigates the importance of regional health care availability for old age survival. Using German reunification as a natural experiment, we show that spatial variation in health care in East Germany considerably influenced the convergence of East German life expectancy toward West German levels. METHOD: We apply cause-deleted life tables and continuous mortality decomposition for the years 1982-2007 to show how reductions in circulatory mortality among the elderly affected the East German catch-up in life expectancy. RESULTS: Improvements in remaining life expectancy at older ages were first seen in towns with university hospitals, where state-of-the-art services became available first. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that the modernization of the health care system had a substantial effect on old-age life expectancy and helped to significantly reduce circulatory diseases as the main cause of death in East Germany.

dc.identifier

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26425117

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60

dc.identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14658

dc.language

eng

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Springer Science and Business Media LLC

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Popul Health Metr

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10.1186/s12963-015-0060-2

dc.subject

Circulatory mortality

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Germany

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Health Care Quality

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Life expectancy

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Natural experiment

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The importance of regional availability of health care for old age survival - Findings from German reunification.

dc.type

Journal article

pubs.author-url

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26425117

pubs.begin-page

26

pubs.organisational-group

Center for Population Health & Aging

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Duke

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Duke Population Research Institute

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Sanford School of Public Policy

pubs.publication-status

Published online

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13

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