European Divergence

During the last four decades, trends in life expectancy differed between East and West of Europe considerably. The present project aims to provide new data on cause-of-death trends to be used in comparative studies and to serve as cornerstone in further explorations of relations between mortality trends and health policies. Within the next three years, the collaboration between INED and MPIDR on this topic will allow to get started new projects devoted to specific countries like Belarus, Moldavia and Eastern Germany in the same time as already existing projects will be finalized. It will benefit from the involvement of young researchers who will take in charge the reconstruction of coherent series of deaths by cause in several Eastern and Central European countries. The project is made up of four main parts. 1. The analysis of the health crisis in the former USSR since the 1960s will be completed. The series will be updated for Ukraine and a book devoted to the Baltic countries will be published. Belarus and Moldavia will be added in order to complete the puzzle. An international database will provide with all the reconstructed series. 2. Germany offers a valuable illustration of East-West divergence or convergence before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. To compare the two parts of the country, data on causes of death need to be harmonized. The work already in progress for West Germany will be extended to East Germany and coherent series of deaths by cause will be reconstructed for the two countries since the 1960s. 3. Sub-national differences in mortality by cause will be considered more specifically: 40- year variations in geographical differences among 100 Russian oblasts and recent sociocultural inequalities in Lithuania. 4. Finally, the confrontation of all the reconstructed time-series (including Poland and the Czech Republic) with trends in socio-economic indicators and with implementation of health policies will be the basis for new highlights on health transition and a reappraisal of the reliability of the concept of divergence convergence process.