Paper in PDFOlga GAGAUZ, PhD in sociology, Associate Professor National Institute for Economic Research of ASM
Cristina AVRAM, PhD Student, University Charles, Prague, Czech Republic
This article presents the results of the comparative study on the mortality and life expectancy at birth dynamics in Moldova and six other post-Soviet countries in the European region – Belarus, Russia, Ukraine,Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. The aim of the research is to highlight the convergences and divergences, as well as the causes which lead Moldova to lag behind in this field.
The study is based on Human Mortality Database (HMD) and Human Causes-of-Death Database(HCD) data. For Moldova, mortality tables for the resident population were used (with the exclusion of migrants who have been absent from the country for more than 12 months).
Despite the similar trends in the dynamics of life expectancy at birth in the selected countries since the mid-1990s, there is an increasing divergence in this respect. The Baltic countries, especially Estonia,have succeeded in achieving significant progress in reducing mortality and increasing life expectancy at birth, while Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Moldova remain outliers. Decomposition of mortality by causes of death demonstrates that the reduction in mortality by cardiovascular diseases has had a major impact on the development of the gap in life expectancy at birth observed between Estonia and Moldova.