Patterns of Cohort Mortality in the Soviet Population

Demographers have taken great interest in mortality trends of the population of the Soviet Union. This is mainly because of the decline in life expectancy at birth among males in the late 1960s and the rise in reported infant morality in the early 1970s. Though there has been some improvement in these rates since then, both infant mortality and mortality at older ages (especially for males) remain high compared with other developed countries. Scholars have offered three types of interpretation of the rise in Soviet mortality in the 1960s and 1970s: worsening contemporary health conditions, cohort replacement and improvement in data quality.

This study uses newly published Soviet data, consisting of reported age-specific death rates (ASDRs) for five-year age groups for ags 5 through 59, to investigate cohort effects on mortality. The authors' main findings are as follows:

(1) Both males and females born during World War II experienced elevated cohort mortality. This was especially true in the European parts of the Soviet Union, which experienced the effects of the war most severely.

(2) Males who were in early adolescence during World War II also experienced elevated cohort mortality. Females who were adolescents or young adults during the war experienced somewhat elevated cohort mortality. Again, these effects were especially striking in the European parts of the country.

(3) There was no evidence of elevated cohort mortality among males of combatant age during World War II.

(4) Females who were born in the Central Asian republics from the mid-1920s through 1944 experienced elevated cohort mortality. This may have been an indirect consequence of efforts by Soveit authorities to integrate Central Asia into the Soviet Union.