Health Inequality across Lives and Cohorts in Germany

近年来，科学和公众对健康不平等的兴趣激增。目前的大部分研究都围绕着社会经济健康梯度是如何产生的以及它如何随时间变化的问题。要回答这些问题，必须有一个纵向的视角，因为社会经济地位、与健康相关的资源禀赋以及健康本身在整个生命过程中都会发生变化。然而，德国以前的研究主要是跨部门的，在很大程度上忽视了健康不平等的时间变化特征。相比之下，美国最近的研究提倡从纵向、动态的角度看待健康不平等。这些研究的结果表明，在整个生命过程中，社会经济健康差距越来越大。此外，这一趋势在年轻人中最为明显，表明各年龄组之间的健康不平等加剧。尽管它们具有明显的社会相关性，但我们缺乏针对德国背景的可比分析和研究结果。因此，一些基本问题仍然没有答案：社会地位之间的健康差距是增加，减少还是保持不变？哪些机制支配着这些健康轨迹？这些机制如何在不同的生命阶段和不同的出生队列中发挥作用？本项目旨在解决这些问题。我们的主要兴趣是在社会地位和健康之间的时间变化的关系，跟踪跨生命和跨队列的健康不平等的发展。我们利用累积不平等理论来分析健康轨迹并揭示潜在的机制。这个统一的框架，整合了以前的理论的起源和发展的健康不平等，允许导出一般假设指导的实证分析。为了验证这些假设，我们将使用德国社会经济小组研究的数据。

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.