Did Living Standards Converge? Beyond GDP in Post-Socialist Europe and Russia

Michal Brzezinski ()
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Michal Brzezinski: University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences

No 2026-13, Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw

Abstract: Three decades after the fall of communism, GDP convergence is widely cited as evidence that the post-socialist transition succeeded. But GDP is a narrow measure of living standards. This paper asks whether convergence toward Western Europe holds up once health, inequality, and leisure are also taken into account. We construct a comprehensive welfare measure for Poland, Czechia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Russia, benchmarked against Germany, covering the 1980s through 2022. In every country, welfare relative to Germany falls well below what GDP alone would suggest. Russia’s welfare stands at roughly half its GDP level, driven by the post-Soviet mortality crisis and extreme inequality—challenging characterisations of Russia as a “normal” middle-income country. Hungary, conventionally grouped with the Visegrad convergence successes, suffers a substantial welfare shortfall driven by decades of poor health outcomes. Poland emerges as the strongest performer in convergence dynamics. Life expectancy is the largest contributor to this gap.

Keywords: welfare measurement; Eastern Europe; Russia; transition economies; living standards; life expectancy; inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 I31 O57 P36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:war:wpaper:2026-13

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