Life expectancy?
There are obviously a lot of variables to be considered in this kind of thing. Post-1991, life expectancy in Russia took a big drop -- but if you look more closely at things, you'll see that this was for only one sex (men) and oddly enough not in regions with a Muslim population. If you look more closely, you notice that the excess deaths are middle-aged men -- not children or old people, as you would expect if it were some kind of health-care-quality issue.
It was the same reason male life-expectany in some parts of Scotland is 55 -- booze, which became hugely cheap post-1991. Didn't have anything to do wih education or health-care quality, which stayed more-or-less the same. So you have to factor cultural issues (like a culture of male binge-drinking) in addition to the more quantifiable stuff.
--- On Sat, 9/6/08, WD <mister.wd at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: WD <mister.wd at gmail.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Infant Mortality Question
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Saturday, September 6, 2008, 3:23 PM
> I recall reading somewhere credible that social scientists
> consider
> infant mortality to be one of the best ways to measure the
> overall
> "social health" of a particular society. This
> sounds right to me
> given that infant death rates are probably a function of
> interrelated
> things like education, access to health care, poverty,
> nutrition, etc.
>
> So, is it true that infant mortality rates tell more about
> social
> health than other statistics? Are there other statistics
> that --
> taken by themselves -- reveal just as much (or more) about
> overall
> social health?
>
> Thanks,
> -WD
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