Market reform and mortality in transition economies

The striking increase in mortality rates in Russia in the early 1990s occurred simultaneously with the government's erratic attempts to introduce market reforms. Other transition economies, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, avoided increases in death rates while they implemented rapid and deep reforms. Is there a link between mortality and the speed or depths of reforms, as suggested by other researchers [e.g. Sachs (1996) American Economic Review 86(2), 128–233]? This paper uses aggregate data on 22 transition economies for 1989–1994 to investigate this question. While the relationship between an index of reform progress and death rates is ambiguous, death rates in these countries are correlated with measures of reform success, such as GDP growth and the inflation rate. Higher crime rates and higher unemployment rates are also related to larger increases in death rates.