Shock Without Therapy: The Political Economy of the Postsocialist Mortality Crisis

Dr Gábor Scheiring is an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University Qatar. This presentation was recorded as part of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention Michaelmas Term Seminar Series, 2023.

Foreshadowing today’s epidemic of deaths of despair hitting the United States, an unprecedented mortality crisis ravaged Eastern Europe 30 years ago as the region transitioned to capitalism. In the first 15 years after the fall of Communism, Russia lost more than three times as many people as during World War I, with male life expectancy dropping 5.7 years from 1991-1994. Over the first decade, this translated into 7.3 million excess deaths in Eastern Europe.

This mortality crisis represents one of the largest demographic catastrophes seen outside famine or war in recent history and offers insightful parallels with today’s America. Case and Deaton highlight that “it is no exaggeration to compare the long-standing misery of these Eastern Europeans with the wave of despair driving suicides, alcohol, and drug abuse among less-educated white Americans.”

Leveraging the biggest data-gathering project on the postsocialist mortality crisis, the research underlying the lecture presents new quantitative and qualitative evidence on the role of deindustrialization, privatization, and welfare intervention in the post-socialist mortality crisis.

The central thesis is that the varieties of economic shocks and policy therapies explain the intensity of the mortality crisis. The bigger the economic shock, the more people die from stress and despair. The better the therapy, the fewer people die from stress and despair.

The lecture concludes with a transatlantic comparison of deaths of despair and the future of democracy, focusing on the health crises in Hungary, Russia, and the United States.