Does Chaotic History Make Life Expectancy Trends Chaotic in Frontier Countries like Baltic States?

Jacques Vallin, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Domantas Jasilionis, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and Lithuanian Social Research Centre
France Meslé, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

From Polish and Swedish occupation to their second independence, through Russian Empire enrolment, first independence, and Soviet occupation, Baltic countries experienced strong changes that caused major impacts on their health transition that would be quite interesting to document, but they also produced dramatic changes in the quality and the accuracy of information that makes it difficult. After summarizing existing mortality indicators for the farer past, we’ll carefully estimate mortality trends since WW-I to compare them to French and Russian trends to discuss what were the consequences of getting in and then getting out of the Soviet system in terms of health and survival. We’ll show how Baltic countries suffered from their incorporation into the USSR but also had very fast progress in 1955-64, before falling into the Soviet health crisis in 1965-1990, to finally recover better and sooner than all other new states born from the split of the USSR.