RESEARCH INSTITUTE POLITICAL ECONOMY Mass Privatization and the Postcommunist Mortality Crisis Lawrence King, David Stuckler, & Patrick Hamm October 2006 Gordon Hall 418 North Pleasant Street Amherst, MA 01002 Phone: 413.545.6355 Fax: 413.577.0261
[email protected] www.umass.edu/peri/ WORKINGPAPER SERIES Number 118 Mass Privatization and the Postcommunist Mortality Crisis1 Lawrence King1, David Stuckler2, and Patrick Hamm3 October 5th, 2006 Keywords: postcommunist, mortality crisis, privatization, psychosocial stress. JEL codes: I12, J18, L33, P36. 1University of Cambridge, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences. E-mail:
[email protected]. 2 University of Cambridge, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences. E-mail:
[email protected]. 3Harvard University, Department of Sociology. E-mail:
[email protected] Word Count: 15,934 1 The authors would like to thank David Ellerman, Silke Aisenbrey, Lawrence Raffalovich, Paul Starr, Tom DiPrete, Bruce Western, Katherine Newman, Karl Mayer, Ivan Szelenyi, Bill Domhoff, Peter Bearman, Jim Vreeland, Devah Pager, Marcus Kurtz, and Andrew Schrank for assistance on, and comments and criticisms of, various drafts of this paper. We would also like to thank the participants at the conference on mass privatization held at the Maxwell European Center, of Syracuse University, in Washington, D.C., in February of 2006, as well as participants at department colloquia and workshops at Yale, Columbia, Princeton and the University of Massachusetts. 1 Abstract During the transition to capitalism, the postcommunist countries have experienced unprecedented mortality crises, although there has been considerable variation within — and between — countries and regions. Much of this variation remains unexplained, although alcohol and psychological stress have been found to be major causes of declining life expectancy.