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

Joan Costa-Font, Anna Nicińska and Melcior Rosello-Roig

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

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: later life health; health care system; transition shocks; Soviet communism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H75 H79 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 11 pages
Date: 2025-07-31
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Published in Social Science & Medicine, 31, July, 2025, 376. ISSN: 0277-9536

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:127573

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