Did Postcommunist Privatization Increase Mortality?

Abstract

We reexamine the recent controversy over the possibility that mass enterprise privatization raised mortality in post-communist countries. Our analysis demonstrates that the country-level correlation of privatization and mortality reported in previous research is not robust to recomputing the mass-privatization measure, to assuming a short lag for economic policies to affect mortality, and to controlling for country-specific mortality trends. Our analysis of data from Russian regions also finds no evidence that privatization increased mortality. Finally, we show that there is little support for the assertion that privatization could have influenced mortality by increasing unemployment.

Keywords: privatization, mortality, postcommunist countries

JEL Classification: I18, J11, J21, P31, P36