Radical
Statistics
Wider research on the Russian mortality crisis
Ray Thomas, Autumn ’98, Issue 69, pp. 52-53
By Robert McIntyre
Listed at the end of this note are references to several studies done at the United Nations University/World Institute for Development Economic Research on exactly the question Ray Thomas underlines in Issue 69. Thomas reports on a paper delivered by Martin McKee and notes that the connection between unemployment, stress, alcohol consumption and the possibly special Russian prevalence of binge drinking and overall mortality.
I simply list my interpretation of several of the provocative findings of this research: (1) the mortality rise is concentrated among ‘prime working age’ men, with little negative effect on the elderly and even some improvement in child health (both surprising in light of the collapse of the health care system); (2) that carefully constructed comparisons of other countries undergoing dramatic labour market disruption show similar results in Argentina and East Germany (in the first case, in the absence of an adequate social support system, in the latter with the replacement of one system with a very different one, a sharp rejection of prevailing norms and values, and large-scale forced early retirement as an unemployment control tactic) and no reaction at all in Finland (continuity within an extensive social-democratic welfare state, but in the presence of a heavy-drinking male sub-culture). Baltic and Eastern/Central European countries more or less fit into this overall pattern.
This is a causally complex matter that is treated systematically in the studies cited below. One conclusion that connects directly with the question raised by Thomas is that what happened in Russia is best understood as an ‘adaptation crisis in which uncontrolled stress played a central role’. A rise in the prevalence of binge drinking makes sense under these conditions and its mortality effects are made larger by a sharp fall in the relative price of alcohol (after the abandonment of Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol policies), lower quality alcohol, and the deterioration of the emergency medical system.
REFERENCES
Cornia, G.A. (1996), ‘Labour Market Shock, Psychosocial Stress and the Transition’s Mortality Crisis’, Research Paper 4, October
Cornia G.A. and Paniccia, R. (1996), ‘The Transition’s Population Crisis: An Econometric Investigation of Nuptiality, Fertility and Mortality in Severely Distressed Economies’, Moct-Most, no. 6
Paniccia, R. (1997), ‘Shot- and Long-term Determinants of Cardiovascular Mortality: An Econometric Assessment of the Working Age Population in Russia, 1965-1995’, Research Paper 14, June
Shkolnikov, V.M. and Cornia, G.A. (1998), ‘Population Crisis and Rising Mortality in Transitional Russia’, in Cornia (ed.), The Transition Mortality Crisis (manuscript)
Robert McIntyre
C/o Radical Statistics
10 Ruskin House
Heaton
Bradford
BD9 6ER
