We examined whether differences in health were associated with different probabilities of marital transitions in a longitudinal study, using Cox proportional hazard analysis. Data on approximately 10,000 Dutch persons of the GLOBE study, aged 15-74 years, were used for this purpose. The study...

In order to assess the impact of medical care innovations on post-1950 mortality in The Netherlands, we analysed trends in mortality from a selection of conditions suggested by Rutstein et al.'s lists of "unnecessary untimely mortality". This selection covers 11 types of innovation, and includes...

The aim of this paper is to give a detailed and fairly objective description of rapid mortality decline in The Netherlands between 1850 and 1992 with respect to the start, end, and phases of the decline. Turning points were estimated for the standardized mortality trend, and for age and...

The rise of life expectancy in Europe has been a very uneven process, both in time and space. This paper aims to identify instances in which major political conditions are likely to have influenced the rise of life expectancy, focusing on formation and dissolution of states and supranational...

Studies on health inequalities have usually focused either on mortality or on morbidity. This concerns national studies as well as international comparisons of health inequalities. This paper seeks to bridge the gap by applying health expectancy as a synthetic overall measure of health. The...

This paper describes educational differences in starting excessive alcohol consumption during years of follow-up among 1648 initially alcohol-consuming Dutch adults. The longitudinal GLOBE study provides the unique possibility to study explanations for educational differences due to the...

Over the past five decades, two successive waves of political reform have brought democracy to, first, Spain, Portugal and Greece, and, more recently, Central and Eastern European countries. We assessed whether democratization was associated with improvements in population health, as indicated...

The persistence of socioeconomic inequalities in health, even in the highly developed ‘welfare states’ of Western Europe, is one of the great disappointments of public health. Health inequalities have not only persisted while welfare states were being built up, but on some measures have even...

Comparisons among countries can help to identify opportunities for the reduction of inequalities in health. We compared the magnitude of inequalities in mortality and self-assessed health among 22 countries in all parts of Europe.

Equal treatment for equal needs, irrespective of socio-economic position, is a major issue in many countries. Although in the Netherlands differences in utilization of health care between population groups are less pronounced than in most other countries, some differences by socio-economic...