East and West German Mortality before and after Reunification - New Insights from the German Life Expectancy Survey

Marc A. Luy, Federal Institute for Population Research, Germany

While mortality conditions in divided Germany have been almost identical in the first 20 years after World War II, the improvements in survivorship rates in the GDR fell back more and more rapidly since 1960. This process reached its peak at the time of reunification. From this moment on the overall gap in mortality is narrowing even more rapidly than it had once widened. Since East Germany's mortality pattern was very unique within Eastern Europe, those living conditions that changed around and before 1990 should be the prime candidates for an explanation. In the presentation the inner German differences in age-, sex- and cause-of-death-specific mortality will be analyzed. Based on this, relationships between the relevant mortality related factors on micro and macro level will be shown in the context of past, present, and expected future trends in the development of mortality conditions in East and West Germany.