February 13, 2014 | News

Congratulations!

MPIDR researcher Tobias Vogt has successfully defended his dissertation at the University of Rostock. His PhD work addressed the extent to which specific factors —  primarily health care and disposable income — lead to higher life expectancy.

He used German unification as a natural experiment and analyzed data from multiple data sources, such as the Human Mortality Database, the German Pension Insurance, and National Transfer Accounts. One of his results shows that it is primarily older people who benefited most from unification: They experienced the highest gains in life expectancy, owing in the main to rising retirement income and better medical care.