Dying Unneeded by Michelle A. Parsons

Author:Michelle A. Parsons [Parsons, Michelle A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Gender Studies, LGBTQ+ Studies, Gay Studies
ISBN: 9780826503541
Google: C7wpEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Published: 2021-04-30T03:19:59+00:00

CHAPTER 6

Mortality

The historical divergence in life expectancy between Eastern and Western Europe since the 1960s has been called the East-West divide (Vàgerö and Illsley 1992). Whereas life expectancy in the West continued to steadily improve, in the East it remained the same or worsened. Figure 1 shows three former Eastern bloc countries’ male life expectancies against that of France and the United States from 1960 through 2011. Life expectancy in the United States steadily increased by almost ten years to seventy-nine years. In France, it increased by twelve years to eighty-two years. Generally, male life expectancies in the East and West differed by no more than five years in the 1960s. These differences grew larger until the mid-1990s, when male life expectancies in the East began a slight recovery. Likewise, differences in female life expectancies (see Figure 2) widened between the East and West from the 1960s to the 1990s, when the gap begins to decrease slightly. As much as the general pattern of an East-West divide holds, the Russian Federation, represented by a thicker line, is clearly distinct from the Czech Republic and Romania, which roughly represent the range of life expectancies among Eastern bloc countries over this time period. Russian life expectancies are strikingly lower and more volatile. Russia’s life expectancies are lowest and have not recovered as much. In 2011 male life expectancy in France was more than fifteen years longer than in Russia; female life expectancy was ten years longer.

As might be expected, looking at selected countries of the former Soviet Union (Figures 3 and 4), the Russian Federation data are not as distinct (note that the values on the vertical axes have changed). Among many of these former Soviet Union countries, life expectancy improved from 1985 to 1987. This is widely attributed to Gorbachev’s antialcohol campaign and, less frequently, to the reforms of perestroika, which some have surmised may have “inspired hopes for a better future” (Notzon et al. 1998, 795; Watson 1995). Men’s life expectancy suffered a precipitous drop in the early 1990s in most of the former western Soviet republics (not all of them shown). The Georgian data plateaued during this time period, but Armenia represents the only real exception to the trend. The data are more complicated for women’s life expectancy, but again most countries registered substantial declines in the early 1990s. Nonetheless, only in the Baltics (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) and the Ukraine did the declines approach those of the Russian Federation (Latvia and the Ukraine are shown in Figures 3 and 4). The sex difference in Russian life expectancies reached its greatest measure in the early 1990s. In 1992 women’s life expectancy exceeded men’s by ten years; in 1994 it exceeded men’s by fourteen years.

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