On 8-9 November, Prof. Vladimir Popov, research director at the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute (DOC) took part in the ‘Building states and nations in turbulent contexts’ policy workshop in Yerevan.
He presented a paper, ‘The fall and rise of life expectancy in Russia in the 1970s-2010s: Are there similarities with the decline in life expectancy of non-Hispanic Whites in the US in the 2000s-2010s?’, based on the concept note for the ongoing DOC Research project ‘Mortality and life expectancy in post-communist countries. What are the lessons for other countries?’.
Prof. Popov argued that there are similarities between the steep upsurge in mortality and the decline in life expectancy in the 1990s in most post-communist countries and other major cases of known decline in life expectancy due to social ‘non-material’ reasons (e.g., the transition from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic age; the enclosure movement and the industrial revolution in Britain in the 16th – 18th centuries; the aftermath of the abolition of slavery and the civil war in the US; and to the recent rise in mortality among non-Hispanic whites since 1999 in the US – a very rare phenomenon in a high income country).
Other relevant papers by Vladimir Popov on this topic include the following:
- Mortality Crisis in Russia Revisited: Evidence from Cross-Regional Comparison. – MPRA Paper 21311, March 2010; CEFIR and NES working paper # 157, January 2011.
- Russia’s Mortality Crisis. WILL WE EVER LEARN? PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo 127, October 2010.
- Alcoholism Cannot Explain Russian Mortality Spike. –IPS, July 25, 2017.
- Early Death in Russia. –IPS, July 20, 2017 (co-authored with J.K. Sundaram).
