German Society for Demography (DGD) • 25.03.2024Best Paper Award for REDIM Researchers

In the following, we provide a chronological overview of our contributions to the meeting.

Wednesday, March 20th

Session 1C “How Covid Pandemic Affected Mortality Rates in Nordic Countries and Germany?” (2:15pm – 3:45pm) chaired by Mika Gissler (THL) and Jonas Schöley (MPIDR):

Michael Mühlichen (in collaboration with Markus Sauerberg and Pavel Grigoriev, all from BiB) presented his work on “Excess Mortality in Germany: Spatial, Cause-Specific and Seasonal Effects Associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020–2022”.

Session 2C: “Social Inequalities in Morbidity and Mortality in a Comparative Perspective” (4:15pm – 5:45pm) chaired by Daniela Georges (University of Rostock), Mojgan Padyab (Umeå University) and Cosmo Strozza (CPop):

Markus Sauerberg (in collaboration with Michael Mühlichen, Laura Cilek and Ina Alliger from BiB as well as Florian Bonnet and Giancarlo Camarda from INED) presented his work on “Exploring the Relationship between Economic Performance and Life Expectancy across Europe’s Regions between 2005 and 2018”.

Dr. Markus Sauerberg (BiB) talks about the connection of spatial mortality differences across Europe with economic conditions. Source: © BiB

Sebastian Klüsener – in collaboration with Georg Wenau, Pavel Grigoriev (BiB), Roland Rau (University of Rostock) and Vladimir M. Shkolnikov (MPIDR) – held a presentation on the topic “Does Place Matter? Regional Variation in the SES-Mortality Gradient among Retired German Men”.

Thursday, March 21st

DGD Awards (4:45pm – 6:00pm) chaired by Sven Drefahl (Stockholm University) and Annelene Wengler (RKI):

From left to right: Dr. Annelene Wengler (Robert Koch Institute, Berlin) presents the Best Paper Award 2024 of the DGD to Dr. Michael Mühlichen (BiB). Source: © BiB

The article “Different health systems – Different mortality outcomes? Regional disparities in avoidable mortality across German-speaking Europe, 1992–2019” by Michael Mühlichen (BiB), Mathias Lerch (EPFL), Markus Sauerberg (BiB) and Pavel Grigoriev (BiB) was published in the journal Social Science & Medicine and received the DGD Best Paper Award 2024. Michael Mühlichen presented the main outcomes of this study in the DGD Awards session. It examines the influence of different health systems on avoidable deaths in the German-speaking regions of Central Europe. These are deaths between the ages of 0 and 74 that could in principle be avoided by primary prevention (preventable mortality) or timely and adequate health care (amenable mortality). The study shows a clear north-south and east-west divide across the studied area. According to the study, avoidable deaths reduce life expectancy particularly strongly in eastern Germany, especially in Western Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt. Some regions in western Germany characterised by economic structural change also have a high avoidable mortality rate. The authors conclude that health policy measures in the areas of prevention and care need to be improved in these regions. A comparison with healthcare systems in neighbouring regions could be worthwhile here: Switzerland and South Tyrol have the fewest avoidable deaths, followed by western Austria and southern Germany.