Socioeconomic Determinants of Male Mortality in Europe: The Absolute and Relative Income Hypotheses Revisited

Jeroen J.A. Spijker, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Leo van Wissen, University of Groningen

This paper investigates the association between both absolute and relative income and male mortality from several important cause-of-death categories in Europe from around 1980 to the late 1990s. We use longitudinal data for Western and Eastern European countries and introduce time lags for revelant explanatory variables. Results showed that absolute prosperity was more often significant than relative prosperity in Eastern than in Western Europe, whereas relative income is more important in Western Europe. Another important East-West difference was that effects on non-cancer mortality in Eastern Europe was immediate, while a lag time of 15 years was needed to observe the strongest association in the Western European models.