Soziale Unterschiede in der Lebenserwartung. Datenquellen in Deutschland und Analysemöglichkeiten des SOEP

Abstract

This paper describes the potential of analysing socio-economic inequalities in life expectancy using the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP). It includes a short review on available data sources and recent evidence on inequalities in life expectancy for Germany. Subsequently the characteristics of the SOEP and some issues regarding the analysis of mortality using the data are discussed. The main problem regarding the goal of providing undistorted estimates for the life expectancy of social strata using the SOEP is the overesti-mation of life expectancy in the study population. We will present a method that allows to overcome this problem by using data of the official life tables for Germany.