The Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign and Russia's Mortality Crisis
Political and economic transition is often blamed for Russia's 40% surge in deaths between 1990 and 1994. Highlighting that increases in mortality occurred primarily among alcohol-related causes and among working-age men (the heaviest drinkers), this paper investigates an alternative explanatio...
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| Other Authors: | , |
| Format: | Book/Monograph Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge, Mass
National Bureau of Economic Research
December 2012
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| Series: | NBER working paper series
no. w18589 |
| DOI: | 10.3386/w18589 |
| Online Access: | Verlag, kostenfrei: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18589 Verlag, kostenfrei: http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w18589 
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| Author Notes: | Jay Bhattacharya, Christina Gathmann, Grant Miller |
| Summary: | Political and economic transition is often blamed for Russia's 40% surge in deaths between 1990 and 1994. Highlighting that increases in mortality occurred primarily among alcohol-related causes and among working-age men (the heaviest drinkers), this paper investigates an alternative explanation: the demise of the 1985-1988 Gorbachev Anti-Alcohol Campaign. Using archival sources to build a new oblast-year data set spanning 1978-2000, we find a variety of evidence suggesting that the campaign's end explains a large share of the mortality crisis - implying that Russia's transition to capitalism and democracy was not as lethal as commonly suggested |
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| Physical Description: | Online Resource |
| Format: | Mode of access: World Wide Web. System requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files. |
| DOI: | 10.3386/w18589 |
| Access: | Open Access |