Increases in union stability and non-union childbearing during the latter half of the 20th century produced substantial increases in the prevalence of step-families. Research on step-family fertility in several European countries and the United States show that, net of a couple’s combined...

Abdel Omran's 1971 theory of "Epidemiologic Transition" was the first attempt to account for the extraordinary advances in health care made in industrialized countries since the 18th century. In the framework of the Demographic Transition, it implied a general convergence of life expectancies...

While, during several decades, unfavourable trends in mortality were quite similar in Central Europe and in the former USSR, in the most recent years, these two parts of Europe are diverging. In most Central European countries, life expectancy is now increasing mainly thanks to a decline in...

This article analyses changes in marital status differences in mortality from approximately 1970 to 1995 among men and women aged 65-74 in ten developed countries (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England and Wales, Finland, France, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden). Data were obtained from the...

Trends in child mortality disparities show that within country inequities have remained constant in some countries and worsened in most of the other ones. Only three countries, with relatively small populations which comprise less than 2 per cent of our sample, were able to achieve both a...

In this paper, I examine differentials in under-five mortality for the state of São Paulo, Brazil, between urban and rural areas and by location within urban areas over a 21-year period between 1970 and 1991. I also investigate economic inequalities in under-five mortality for urban areas....

Since the collapse of the socialist system at the beginning of the 1990s, the health situation in the Czech Republic has improved more rapidly than in other CEE countries. Mortality from circulatory diseases decreased significantly at higher ages. The recent decline in mortality is likely to be...

This paper presents estimates of changes in socioeconomic inequalities in mortality between the 1980s and the 1990s in nine European countries. The best available evidence shows that relative inequalities in mortality generally widened, while the absolute gap remains about the same. However, the...

Mortality follow-up of two census samples allowed an estimate of socio-economic differentials in mortality for old men, using occupational classes and levels of education reported by individuals when they were active. The study shows persisting mortality differentials after 60 years of age. Over...

This article introduces the Special Collection of papers presented at the first seminar of the Committee on Emerging Health Threats (CEHT) of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), "Determinants of Diverging Trends of Mortality". The seminar was held in Rostock...