Life expectancy in Russia: there are no words, just numbers

Russia has lagged behind its neighbors in terms of life expectancy

BBCLife expectancy in Russia has hardly changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it has increased in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, which were satellites of the USSR.

According to a study published in The Lancet medical journal (Mackenbach et al., The unequal health of Europeans: successes and failures of policies), the main causes of deaths in the former Eastern Bloc countries are addiction to alcohol, smoking and traffic accidents. In the countries of the former USSR, these problems have become chronic.

In Russia, the life expectancy of men at birth was 63 years in the early 1990s, then decreased to 58 years in 2000, and in 2009 rose to 62. For women, life expectancy in the same periods was 74, 72 and 74 years, respectively.

Russia: life expectancy at birthSource: Rosstat, January 2013

For comparison, the life expectancy of EU residents of both sexes from 1990 to 2009 increased by an average of six years and amounted to almost 80 years. The situation is most indicative in this regard in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, which until 1990 were dependent territories of the USSR, and in 2004 joined the EU.

Life expectancy of men born in 1960-208,
in Germany, Croatia, Hungary, Estonia and Russia (graph from an article in the Lancet – VM).In early 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the average life expectancy in Russia for both sexes exceeded 70 years.

The Russian authorities set a task to increase the life expectancy of the population to the level of developed countries. In particular, the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the country plans to increase this figure to 75-80 years by 2025.

Live to 60A recent report by the World Health Organization, based on national statistics, states that the lowest average life expectancy for men and women is registered in Kazakhstan (68.7 years), the highest is in Switzerland, Israel, Italy, Spain and Sweden (about 82 years).

In Russia, according to 2011 data, the indicators for both sexes did not reach 70 years, which means that the country occupies the penultimate place in life expectancy on the continent.

"The situation changed when the communist bloc collapsed," the Lancet report says. "Life expectancy indicators improved almost immediately in Poland, former East Germany and then Czechoslovakia, with a slight delay until 1993 – in Hungary, and a few years later in Romania and Bulgaria."

At the same time, life expectancy in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, on the contrary, fell after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was largely due to the decline of the healthcare system in these countries.

In eight other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the indicators tended to go up, but the growth was insignificant. On average, in the CIS, life expectancy for men is 12 years lower than in the EU, for women – eight years.

Judging by the data on the death rate in 2010, the probability of a 20-year–old Russian man living to 60 is 63%, while the chances of a Western European man reach 90%," notes Lancet.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru27.03.2013