This open access book examines the triangle between family, gender, and health in Europe from a demographic perspective. It helps to understand patterns and trends in each of the three components separately, as well as their interdependencies. It overcomes the widely observable specialization in demographic research, which usually involves researchers studying either family or fertility processes or focusing on health and mortality. Coverage looks at new family and partnership forms among the young and middle-aged, their relationship with health, and the pathways through which they act. Among the old, lifelong family biography and present family situation are explored. Evidence is provided that partners advancing in age start to resemble each other more closely in terms of health, with the health of the partner being a crucial factor of an individual's own health. Gender-specific health outcomes and pathways are central in the designs of the studies and the discussion of the results. The book compares twelve European countries reflecting different welfare state regimes and offers country-specific studies conducted in Austria, Germany, Italy - all populations which have received less attention in the past - and Sweden. As a result, readers discover the role of different concepts of family and health as well as comparisons within European countries and ethnic groups. It will be an insightful resource for students, academics, policy makers, and researchers that will help define future research in terms of gender and public health.

Gabriele Doblhammer-Reiter studied Statistics at the University of Vienna and received her PhD in 1997 in the fields of demography and statistics. She worked as a research scientist from 1995 to 1998 at the Institute for Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. From 1995 to 1996, she was a guest scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg (Austria), yet also in 1996-1997 at the Institute for Family Research in Vienna. As senior research scientist and science coordinator, she worked at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), Rostock, in the Laboratory of Survival and Longevity from 1997 to 2004. In 2002, Doblhammer-Reiter has been visiting Associate Professor at the Stanford Institute for Public Policy at Duke University, North Carolina. Since 2004, she is Professor for Empirical Methods in Social Sciences and Demography at the University of Rostock. She is Executive Director of the Rostock Center for the Study of Demographic Change (since 2006) and is distinguished research scholar at the MPIDR (since 2008). Among other things, she is a reviewer for professional journals (e.g. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) or Social Science and Medicine) and reviewer for funding organizations (e. g. German Research Foundation (DFG), Fund for Scientific Research (FWF)). Since 2009 Gabriele Doblhammer-Reiter is working for the DZNE in Bonn and Rostock / Greifswald. Jordi Guma holds a PhD in Demography, Autonomous University of Barcelona. He also studied a Bachelor in Statistics (UAB), Degree in Marketing (UOC), Master in Territorial and Population Studies (UAB), student of the European Doctoral School of Demography (EDSD) conducted jointly by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research de Rostock (Germany) and the Centre for Economic Demography of the Lund University (Sweden). Currently his main research interest is in family as a social determinant of health inequities in Europe from a gender perspective. His PhD thesis is titled "Family and Subjective health in Spain. A demographic approach".