--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Hence, can't be attributed to the post-1990
> > 'reforms'. Are you
> > therefore suggesting that the many reports of a
> > severe decline in life
> > expectancy should really be attributed to the fSU
> > period?
> >
>
Look at this:
The statistics are stark: Between 1987 and 1994, the number of annual deaths in Russia increased from 1.5 million to 2.3 million. In seven of the past eight years, there have been at least two million deaths in Russia, and in each year since 1992, the number of deaths in Russia has exceeded the number of births, resulting in a net population loss. Mortality increases have been concentrated among working-age males, whose death rates now are about double what they were in the 1960s, when mortality rates first began to rise (Figure 1).
Alcohol consumption appears to be a key culprit in rising Russian mortality. The strongest evidence for the link between mortality and alcohol consumption for Russian males is in their fluctuating rates of death by external causes, such as accidents, injuries, and violence, which are often associated with alcohol abuse. Russian male mortality fell sharply, and Russian male life expectancy reached its highest levels ever, during an antialcohol campaign from 1984 to 1987. This campaign reduced state alcohol production, launched efforts against distillation and distribution of homemade alcoholic beverages, raised state prices for liquor, and fostered compulsory treatment of alcoholism where indicated. It also proved highly unpopular and was abandoned after a few years, after which both alcohol consumption and mortality increased sharply for Russian males.
Also contributing to the increase in mortality in the early 1990s was the stress of the post-Soviet transition. Deaths from circulatory diseases, often associated with stress, were responsible for about half the increase in Russian male mortality in the years immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union. Economic improvement presumably could help cut the numbers of such deaths.
Other causes of death, including those related to environmental hazards, are not important in explaining recent variations in Russian male mortality. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that rates of death from virtually every cause are very high in Russia. Russian working-age males have a death rate about four times that for U.S. males of the same age group, with rates of death due to external causes (accidents, injuries, violence) six times the U.S. rate and those due to infectious and parasitic diseases five times the U.S. Rate.
http://www.rand.org/publications/RB/RB5056/
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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