The response of violent mortality to economic crisis in Russia

From 1992 to 1994 life expectancy for Russian males dropped from 62.0 to 57.6 years. Female life expectancy dropped from 73.8 years to 71.2 years. This drop in life expectancy coincided in time with the introduction of painful economic reforms in Russia, leading to a rapid decrease in real wages and pensions, nearly complete loss of personal savings, and a tremendous increase in the poverty rate. This article examines the temporary changes in mortality for violent causes of death during the crisis period with a special emphasis on age-specific and gender-specific differences in the response to economic crisis

Paper for the 2005 PAA Annual meeting

Mortality crisis in Russia was discussed many times in the scientific literature. However little attention was paid to the problems of the quality of mortality statistics in Russia, which is rapidly deteriorating. During the first half of 1990s mortality from such cause as "injuries undetermined whether accidentally or purposely inflicted" grew with particularly rapid pace. In this study we tested a hypothesis that mortality from violent causes of death (particularly in middle-aged men from marginal social groups) is concealed using death codes from the class "Symptoms, signs and ill-defined conditions" (ICD-9). Reported mortality from this group of causes increased 6-fold for males and 9-fold for females in 1989-2002. This hypothesis of concealing criminal cases of violent deaths under the mask of ill-defined conditions was confirmed using case study of death certificates from the Kirov region of Russia. It is likely that mortality from violent causes in Russia is significantly underestimated by the official statistics

Early-life Predictors of Human Longevity

late-life health and survival is being actively discussed in the scientific literature. This idea is also important for understanding the historical changes in human lifespan through the mechanism of technophysio evolution as suggested by Robert Fogel and Dora Costa. Can this new fascinating concept also be useful to understand (at least partially) the observed sex disparities in adult health and longevity? Are the long-lasting effects of early-life conditions identical for both sexes, or, on the contrary, are they sex-specific? These questions stimulated us to conduct the present pilot exploratory study on the sex specificity of late-life health outcomes for early-life effects

Gender Specific Effects of Early-Life Events on Adult Lifespan

The idea of fetal origins of adult degenerative diseases and early-life programming of late-life health and survival is being actively discussed in the scientific literature. Can this new fascinating concept also be useful to understand (at least partially) the observed sex disparities in adult health and longevity? Are t he long-lasting effects of early-life conditions identical for both sexes, or, on the contrary, they are sex-specific? These questions stimulated us to conduct the present pilo t exploratory study on the gender specificity of late-life health outcomes for early-life effects. In this study we addressed these scientific problems by studying the effects of early-life conditions on adult lifespan of men and women separately, using the methodology of historical prospective study of extinct birth cohorts

Russian Mortality Crisis and the Quality of Vital Statistics

Russia, Ill-defined conditions, Injuries, Data quality, Vital statistics, Mortality,