Health Inequality across Lives and Cohorts in Germany

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Henriette Engelhardt-Wölfler
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; African, American and Oceania Studies
• Term: from 2013 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 252018214

Scientific and public interest in health inequality has surged in recent years. Much of current research revolves around the questions of how the socioeconomic health gradient is produced and how it changes over time. A longitudinal perspective is essential to answer these questions, as socioeconomic position, endowment with health-relevant resources, and health itself change across the life course. Previous research in Germany, however, has been primarily cross-sectional, largely ignoring the time-changing character of health inequalities. Recent studies from the US, in contrast, have advocated a longitudinal, dynamic perspective on health inequality. Findings from these studies have suggested an increasing divergence of socioeconomic health disparities across the life course. Furthermore, this tendency is most pronounced among younger people, indicating an increase in health inequality across cohorts.Despite their obvious social relevance, we lack comparable analyses and findings for the German context. As a result, a number of basic questions remain unanswered: Do health disparities between social positions increase, decrease, or remain constant? Which mechanisms govern these health trajectories? How do these mechanisms operate in different periods of life and in different birth cohorts?This project aims to address these questions. Our prime interest is in the time-changing relationship between social Position and health, tracing the development of health inequality across lives and across cohorts. We draw on Cumulative Inequality Theory to analyze health trajectories and to unravel the underlying mechanisms. This unified framework, integrating previous theories on the origin and development of health inequality, allows deriving general hypotheses guiding the empirical analysis. To fest these hypotheses, we will use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants