Equal before luck? Well-being consequences of personal deprivation and transition

Joan Costa-Font, Anna Nicińska and Melcior Rossello Roig

Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 376, issue C

Abstract: Past trauma resulting from personal life shocks, especially during periods of particular volatility such as regime transition (or regime change), can give rise to significant long-lasting effects on people’s health and well-being. We study this question by drawing on longitudinal and retrospective data to examine the effect of past exposure to major individual-level shocks (specifically hunger, persecution, dispossession, and exceptional stress) on current measures of an individual’s health and mental well-being. We examine the effect of the timing of the personal shocks, alongside the additional effect of ‘institutional uncertainty’ resulting from regime change in post-communist European countries. Our findings are as follows. First, we document evidence of the detrimental effects of shocks on a series of relevant health and well-being outcomes. Second, we show evidence of more pronounced detrimental consequences of such personal shocks experienced by individuals living in formerly communist countries (which accrue to about 8% and 10% in the case of persecution and hunger, respectively) than in non-communist countries. The effects are robust and take place in addition to the direct effects of regime change and exposure to personal shocks.

Keywords: Transition shocks; Soviet communism; Later life health; Health care system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H75 H79 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Working Paper: Equal Before Luck? Well-Being Consequences of Personal Deprivation and Transition (2025)
Working Paper: Equal Before Luck? Well-Being Consequences of Personal Deprivation and Transition (2025)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:376:y:2025:i:c:s0277953625003053

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117975

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