Abstract:
Ten years have passed since the so called Wende in East Germany. The change of the economical and political system influenced the life of the individuals in multiple ways. From a health economics' perspective one could ask for the implications of changes in lifestyle. This paper reviews economic approaches of health influencing behaviours and summarizes lifestyle research concerning the former GDR. There exist several studies from epidemiological, psychological and sociological points of view, which focus on consequences of transformation, but the issue has not been treated by a health economic analysis yet. Therefore a basic form for a health economics' analysis is introduced, which offers links for a structural model with latent variables. In a further step it has to be transformed into an econometric model and tested.