The Inequality and Mobility of Exposure to European Soviet Communism

Joan Costa-Font, Anna Nicinska () and Melcior Rossello Roig
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Anna Nicinska: University of Warsaw
Melcior Rossello Roig: NHS England

No 17934, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We compare inequality and social mobility trends in European countries We compare inequality and social mobility trends in European countries exposed to Soviet Communist (SC) regimes with those not exposed, using similar welfare measures. We draw upon a rich retrospective dataset that collects relevant welfare measures across regimes, including information on living space and self-reported health, and relevant inequality and mobility indices for ordinal and categorical data. Our results suggest evidence of comparable welfare inequality trends in countries exposed to SC and those unexposed. Although individuals exposed to SC enjoyed higher levels of social mobility, differences in inequality across countries exposed to different regimes were negligible. A plausible explanation lies in the countervailing role of the welfare state in countries not exposed to SC and the inefficiency of the bureaucratic allocation of private goods aimed at reducing inequality in countries exposed to SC.

Keywords: education; social mobility; Soviet Communism, health inequality, self-reported health, living space, welfare, inequality, bureaucracies, European Communist Regimes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H53 I13 I14 I38 N34 P20 P29 P36 P46 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06
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