Abstract
The massive economic contraction that followed the disintegration of the Soviet system has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. What has been relatively neglected is the most troubling aspect of the transitions, the explosive rise in ‘violent mortality’, or epidemic levels of cardiovascular disease and ‘external7 causes of death, such as alcohol poisoning, homicide and suicide.1 Countries in the ‘mortality belt’, spanning from Estonia in the north to Ukraine in the south, experienced life expectancy declines of up to six years within the first half-decade of reform — a peacetime mortality crisis unparalleled in modern history.2 To put this in perspective, eliminating all common forms of cancer corresponds to a life expectancy increase of approximately three years, a little less than half of the magnitude of Russia’s mortality experience.3 The United Nation’s MONEE project tabulates that the excess mortality during the 1990s, or deaths that would not have occurred if mortality had remained at 1989 levels, totalled over 3.2 million.4 This crisis is in no respects over; 15 years after transition 11 out of 25 of the post-communist countries have failed to recover to pre-transition levels of life expectancy,5 and public health professionals fear chronic disease epidemics and resurgent infectious disease crises such as AIDS and drug-resistant TB.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
P.P. Chang, D. Ford, L. Meoni, N. Wang and M. Klag, ‘Anger in Young Men and Subsequent Premature Cardiovascular Disease’, Archive Internal Medicine, 163 (2002) 901–6.
T.P. Schultz, ‘An Economic Model of Family Planning and Fertility’, Journal of Political Economy, 77 (1969) 153–80.
Ngaire Woods, The Globalizes: the IMF, the World Bank and Their Borrowers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2007 Lawrence King and David Stuckler
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
King, L., Stuckler, D. (2007). Mass Privatization and the Post-communist Mortality Crisis. In: Lane, D. (eds) The Transformation of State Socialism. Studies in Economic Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591028_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591028_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35592-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-59102-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)