As the COVID-19 pandemic progressed in the USA, ‘hotspots’ shifted geographically over time to suburban and rural counties showing a high prevalence of the disease. We analyse population-adjusted confirmed case rates based on daily US county-level variations in COVID-19 confirmed case counts during the first several months of the pandemic (1 March 2020 through 23 May 2020) to evaluate the spatial dependence ...
Biomarkers defining biological age are typically laborious or expensive to assess. Instead, in the current study, we identified parameters based on standard laboratory blood tests across metabolic, cardiovascular, inflammatory, and kidney functioning that had been assessed in the Berlin Aging Study (BASE) (n = 384) and Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II) (n = 1517). We calculated biological age using those ...
Adequate immunity to COVID-19 apparently cannot be attained in Germany by voluntary vaccination alone, and therefore the introduction of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination is still under consideration. We present findings on the potential acceptance of such a requirement by the German population, and we report on the reasons given for accepting or rejecting it and how these reasons vary according to population ...
Zum heutigen Welttag der psychischen Gesundheit äußert sich Daniel Graeber, wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP) im DIW Berlin, wie folgt:
The COVID-19 pandemic was a long-lasting and stressful event that had enormous psychological, economic, and social consequences. This study extends prior research by examining the relationship between infection rates and mental health as well as its dependency on social class. Therefore, we used large-scale data from a nationwide sample (N = 5,742) across two time periods in the COVID-19 pandemic in ...
Background: The present study aims to delineate the role of preexisting depression for changes in common mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Using mixed-effects linear regression models, we analyzed data on the course of depressive (Patient Health Questionnaire-2) and anxiety (Generalized Anxiety Disorder-2) symptoms as well as loneliness (three-item UCLA Loneliness Scale) ...
This chapter provides an overview of the German long-term care insurance. We document care needs and wellbeing of the elderly population. Moreover, we provide a detailed description of the German long-term care institutions (sources of finance and types of benefits), the professional care work force, and informal caregivers. Finally, we document expenditures on long-term care and estimate the value ...