 Economic Reform and Mortality in the Former Soviet Union: A Study of the Suicide Epidemic in the 1990sNo 243, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) Abstract: Male suicide rates in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic countries increased substantially in the early 1990s and are now the highest in the world. To what extent is this suicide epidemic explained by the macroeconomic instability experienced by these countries in that period? Fixed effects regressions across 22 transition economies indicate that male suicide rates are highly sensitive to the state of the macroeconomy, suggesting that the steep and prolonged declines in GDP in the western countries of the former Soviet Union may have been partly to blame for the suicide epidemic. Evidence also indicates that the general adult male mortality crisis in the region had a ‘feedback’ effect on suicide rates, with the loss of a spouse or friend - or declining life expectancy itself - contributing to rising suicide rates. Female suicide rates, in contrast, are insensitive to the state of the macroeconomy and are more strongly related to alcohol consumption. Keywords: transition economies; mortality; Suicide (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published - published in: European Economic Review, 2001, 45 (4-6), 1007-1019 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp243 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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