Income inequalities widened considerably from 1987 to 2007 in Finland. We compared the association between household income and health problems across three periods and in several different ways of modelling the dependence. Our aim was to find out whether the change in the distribution of income...

Using nationally-representative register data for older people in Finland in period 1998–2003 we study how the number of days in acute hospital and long term institutional care services varies by age and proximity to death and how these use patterns change as mortality improves. Acute health...

This study investigated time patterns of post-divorce excess mortality. Using register-based data, we followed 252,641 married Finns from 1990 until subsequent date of divorce and death until 2003. Among men, excess mortality is highest immediately after divorce, followed by a decline over 8...

Non-marital cohabitation has become increasingly common and is suggested to offer similar mental-health benefits as marriage does. We studied levels and changes in cohabiters' mental health five years before and five years after entering into marriage or separating, and compared long-term...

Although higher education has been associated with lower mortality rates in many studies, the effect of potential improvements in educational distribution on future mortality levels is unknown. We therefore estimated the impact of projected increases in higher education on mortality in European...

Our aim was to find out whether the associations between health and both individual and household economic position reflected a causal effect on health of household affluence and consumption potential. We attempted to separate this effect from health-selection effects, in other words the...

Healthy life expectancy is a composite measure of length and quality of life and an important indicator of health in aging populations. There are few cross-country comparisons of socioeconomic differences in healthy life expectancy. Most of the existing comparisons focus on Western Europe and...

The annual prevalence of psychotropic medication use exceeds 10 percent in Europe and the United States, the prevalence being higher among the divorced than the married. We analysed changes in the three-month prevalence of psychotropic medication use (psycholeptics and psychoanaleptics excluding...

Link and Phelan have proposed to explain the persistence of health inequalities from the fact that socioeconomic status is a “fundamental cause” which embodies an array of resources that can be used to avoid disease risks no matter what mechanisms are relevant at any given time. To test this...

Understanding how having children influences the parents' subjective well-being (happiness) has great potential to explain fertility behavior. We study parental happiness trajectories before and after the birth of a child using large British and German longitudinal data sets. We account for...