Adult Mortality in the Former Soviet Union

Abstract

Mortality in the Soviet Union improved rapidly in the years immediately following World War II, so that in the mid-1960s life expectancies in countries such as Russia and Ukraine were similar to those of the United States. However, this improvement was not sustained; levels of adult mortality in the former Soviet Union today are similar to those found 50 years ago, and they are now well below those of Western industrialized counties. The deterioration was temporarily reversed during Gorbachev’s short-lived anti-alcohol campaign of the mid-1980s, but adult mortality increased sharply following the collapse of the Soviet Union around 1990; since then, mortality has varied greatly. Mortality of working-age men in Russia is particularly high, with some of the highest mortality differences between men and women in the world. A number of reasons are responsible for these trends, including a range of negative macro-level political, institutional, and economic factors, as well as individual-level ones, such as smoking and poor diet. However, alcohol plays a particularly significant role, with the long-standing tradition of binge drinking of vodka being heavily implicated in the high excess risks of deaths from circulatory system diseases and external causes (accidents and violence) in Russia.