Economics not only cause of shorter Russia lives
10:37 a.m. Jul 31, 1998 Eastern
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON, July 31 (Reuters) - The life expectancy of the average Russian
fell by more than six years in the early 1990s because of social
factors, crime, income inequality and vodka, public health experts said
on Friday.
While health has improved markedly in Poland and the Czech and Slovak
republics since the start of the decade, the dramatic decline in Russia
is unprecedented, there and in other industrialised countries.
''All of the former Soviet Union has demonstrated a broadly similar
pattern,'' Professor Martin McKee, of Londons European Centre on Health
of Societies in Transition, said in an interview.
McKee, along with colleagues in Sweden and Russia, examined the
socio-economic factors of Russian's transition from a socialist to
market-led economy to discover why it had been accompanied by such a
severe decline in health.
In a study published in the British Medical Journal they found that the
greatest falls in life expectancy had been in some of the wealthiest
regions of the country, suggesting that there was more to the matter
than poverty.
Between 1990 and 1995 life expectancy fell by 6.3 years for men and 3.4
years for women, and though the trend started in the late 1980s, 1992
was a particularly severe year.
''The regions with the largest falls were predominantly urban, with high
rates of labour turnover, large increases in recorded crime, and a
higher average but unequal distribution of household income,'' the
researchers wrote.
Most of the fall in life expectancy was due to more deaths of people
aged between 30 and 60 years old and the major contributing factor was
heavy consumption of alcohol. Deaths of children or the elderly did not
contribute to the change.
The researchers found that diet and smoking, which played a crucial part
in the long-term trend, could not account for recent changes, nor could
the deterioration of the health-care system.
''There is a whole chain of causation. What we have tried to do in the
paper is say you've got to look at the socio-economic factors but then
you also need to look at the immediate factors. Alcohol comes in as a
major factor as the final link in the chain,'' McKee explained.
The researchers concluded that the rapid pace of change, low social
cohesion and inequality lead to a decline in health, which in Russia is
worsened by alcohol consumption.
''It is not just impoverishment and we shouldn't depend on economic
recovery in Russia to bring about improvements in health. We need to
look at other factors such as instability, fear of change, change itself
and crime as a marker for a certain social cohesion,'' McKee said.
''It may be that you can intervene at a number of points and you don't
just have to wait for economic recovery.''
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited |
