INED, Démodynamiques, Shkolnikov

Institut national d'études démographiques

Séminaire "Démodynamiques"

Mortality differentials in the context of general mortality reversal in Russia: the education status

Vladimir Shkolnikov^(*) et Sergey Adamets^(**)

Mardi 12 mars 1996 de 14 à 15 h (salle du 3e étage)

^(*) Chef du laboratoire d'analyse et de prévision de la mortalité au centre de démographie et d'écologie humaine de Moscou, et chercheur invité à l'INED.
^(**) Chercheur invité à l'INED

Résumé

A valuable new set of mortality data and analytical results have been obtained in a joint French-Russian project on the health crisis in Russia and other former Soviet republics. This makes available a solid basis of concrete knowledge about the principal trends and patterns in Russian mortality since the 1960s. An examination of long-term mortality trends by age and cause-of-death has allowed the identification of the main types of health hazards affecting the Russian population. The analysis shows, for example, that until now the effects of environmental pollution on mortality are significantly less pronounced than the effects of alcohol abuse. Nevertheless, we still know very little about the factors which caused the gradual deterioration of public health in the past and striking worsening in the most recent years, and then only in very general terms.

First of all, it is not clear, what are the socio-economic, cultural, behavioral and other conditions determining increasing mortality risks and how these relationships work in real life. In relation to the striking increase in Russian mortality of the 90s, evaluation of the relative strength of the unfavorable effects induced by individual behavior, on the one hand, and by "material" life standards, on the other, seems to be the principal problem. Precise investigation of mortality differentials by educational status, ethnicity, occupational groups and regions could shed more light on this problem. It could also help to better understanding of the general nature of the Russian health crisis.

This branch of research was almost entirely forbidden in the former Soviet Union for political and ideological reasons. Social inequality in face of death had no right to exist in the prosperous "Society of developed socialism". It was only very recently that E. Andreev and V. Dobrovolskaya produced the first estimates of life expectancy for different ethnic and educational strata in Russian society for the year 1989. It immediately became obvious that the range of mortality levels among various cultural and ethnic population groups is very wide as in other developed countries for which this kind of statistical data are available.

In present project we intend to do an in-depth study of mortality differentials by educational status and their role for the evolution of mortality in the general Russian population. Our analysis is to be based on mortality data for men and women aged 20-69 for the years 1979 and 1989 (the census years). We are also trying to evaluate the survivorship of higher educated Russians between 1989 and 1994 using the microsensus data of 1994 and also the data from one epidemiological cohort study.

SECTIONS TO BE PRESENTED:

1. Educational composition of population and its change between 1979 and 1989.

2. Available mortality data, questions of registration and cohort effects.

3. Temporal changes in expectation of life and educational status.

4. Difference in life expectancy by sex and educational status.

5. Urban-rural differences in life expectancy and educational status.

6. Mortality differentials linked to educational status by age and cause-of-death.

7. Do mortality increases of the 1990s differ by education ?

Animateur de la séance Laurent Toulemon, toulemon@ined.fr

On peut trouver le programme du séminaire sur http://sauvy.ined.fr/seminaires/demodynamiques

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