Also see this web page published by the Journal of the American Medical Association:
http://www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/journals/archive/jama/vol_279/no_10/lf71019a.htm
The data are rather old, referring to 1990-1994. I shudder to think how things have further deteriorated since then. Also have a look at the followup article, which is linked to on that page:
http://www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/sci-news/1998/snr0311.htm#jlf71019
Look at those fatuous suggestions for improving the Russian health figures - increased taxes on booze, together with an anti-smoking campaign! Nothing like a pack of bourgeois for deliberately missing the main issue.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net
ps: I actually thought for a second when I first saw the header that "FSU" was the Florida State University, home of the Seminoles. I've been living in the stix for too long...
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> [This bounced as a nonmember submission. To answer the question, I
> first picked up this fact in the World Bank's journal Transition. -
> Doug]
>
> > Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 14:59:05 -0700
> > From: John Dinardo <jdinardo at uci.edu>
> > X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (X11; I; SunOS 5.5.1 sun4u)
> > MIME-Version: 1.0
> > To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> > Subject: Life Expectancy in former Soviet Union/Eastern Europe
> > References: <199810131850.OAA07342 at dont.panix.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> >
> > In the most recent LBO (#85, Sept 27, 1998) Mr. Henwood writes:
> >
> > [In Russia,]...Life expectancy is back at late 19th century levels,
> > and the population seems to be shrinking, something not seen in
> > modern times in a country not at war.
> >
> > This is not a particularly controversial assertion among
> > demographers, and if I had to bet money on this I would say this
> > assertion is correct, but I have not been able to find any data
> > documenting this. Where did your data come from?
> >
> > Indeed, in my source (United Nations, State of the World's Children)
> > has the following information on "life expectancy" (a sample)
> >
> >
> > 1960 1970 1990 1995 1996
> >
> > Armenia 68 72 71 73 71
> > Azerbaijan 64 68 70 71 71
> > Belarus 69 71 73 71 71
> > Georgia 65 68 72 73 73
> > Russia 69 69 70 68 65
> > Uzbekistan 60 63 69 70 68
> >
> > This seems to give a somewhat different (although
> > not necessarily inconsistent) picture of the situation.
> >
> > For Infant Mortality, the patterns are quite different:
> > (number of deaths under the age of 1 per 1000 births)
> >
> > 1960 1990 1995 1996
> > Armenia 38 35 26 25
> > Azerbaijan 55 44 34 34
> > Belarus 37 20 17 14
> > Georiga 52 32 22 23
> > Russia 48 22 27 20
> > Uzbekistan 84 64 50 46
> >
> > Again this might be explained by differential fertility, but the
> > picture again is different than one may have expected.
> >
> >
> > Any other sources of data?
> >