Gerry Christopher J, Raskina Yulia, Tsyplakova Daria
1International Centre for Health Economics, Management, and Policy (CHEMP), National Research University Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation.
2St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, 62 Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6JF UK.
Soc Indic Res. 2018;140(1):309-332. doi: 10.1007/s11205-017-1764-4. Epub 2017 Oct 28.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union experienced an unanticipated stagnation in the process of mortality reduction that was accelerating in the west. This was followed by even starker fluctuations and overall declines in life expectancy during the 1980s and 1990s. We identify statistically the extent to which, since the 1990s, the countries of the post-communist region have converged as a group towards other regional or cross-regional geopolitical blocks, or whether there are now multiple steady-states ('convergence clubs') emerging among these countries. We apply a complex convergence club methodology, including a recursive analysis, to data on 30 OECD countries (including 11 post-communist countries) drawn from the Human Mortality Database and spanning the period 1959-2010. We find that, rather than converging uniformly on western life expectancy levels, the post-communist countries have diverged into multiple clubs, with the lowest seemingly stuck in low-level equilibria, while the best performers (e.g. Czech Republic) show signs of catching-up with the leading OECD countries. As the post-communist period has progressed, the group of transition countries themselves has become more heterogeneous and it is noticeable that distinctive gender and age patterns have emerged. We are the first to employ an empirical convergence club methodology to help understand the complex long-run patterns of life expectancy within the post-communist region, one of very few papers to situate such an analysis in the context of the OECD countries, and one of relatively few to interpret the dynamics over the long-term.
在20世纪60年代和70年代，中欧和东欧国家以及苏联在死亡率下降进程中经历了意外的停滞，而西方的死亡率下降进程却在加速。随后在20世纪80年代和90年代，预期寿命出现了更为剧烈的波动和总体下降。我们从统计学角度确定，自20世纪90年代以来，后共产主义地区国家作为一个整体，在多大程度上趋向于其他区域或跨区域地缘政治集团，或者这些国家目前是否正在形成多个稳态（“趋同俱乐部”）。我们将一种复杂的趋同俱乐部方法，包括递归分析，应用于从人类死亡率数据库获取的、涵盖1959 - 2010年期间的30个经合组织国家（包括11个后共产主义国家）的数据。我们发现，后共产主义国家并没有统一趋向西方的预期寿命水平，而是分化成了多个俱乐部，其中最差的似乎陷入了低水平均衡，而表现最佳的国家（如捷克共和国）显示出追赶经合组织领先国家的迹象。随着后共产主义时期的推进，转型国家群体本身变得更加多样化，并且明显出现了独特的性别和年龄模式。我们是首个采用实证趋同俱乐部方法来帮助理解后共产主义地区预期寿命复杂长期模式的，是极少数将此类分析置于经合组织国家背景下的论文之一，也是相对较少解读长期动态的论文之一。
