Abstract
Since reunification, great efforts have been made in Germany to achieve comparable social and economic conditions in the two parts of the country, including in the area of health. By the 2000s, the East-west life expectancy gap had closed among women, though it persisted among men. Amid these ambitious campaigns to equalize social and economic conditions at the macro level, the small-scale differences that remained attracted less attention. Although Germany is a country with a federal system, attempts were nonetheless made to create comparable living conditions (gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse) throughout the country, as is prescribed in the German Constitution (Barlösius 2006).
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Kibele, E.U.B. (2012). Introduction. In: Regional Mortality Differences in Germany. Demographic Research Monographs. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4432-5_1
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