Soviet communism and later-life health and health care

This chapter explores the health and healthcare effects of Soviet communism exposure and provides and up to date state of the literature on the topic. Such exposure is found has generally a negative effect on health, and longer exposure also had a negative effect on the trust for and confidence on public institutions. This is compounded by the negative impact of the regime transitions and distress of the early 1990s, which also had a negative impact on health outcomes. The chapter continues by analyzing the formal and informal components of the health institutions put in place by the Soviet System and reviews the failures and successes of the public health and healthcare policies put in place by the communist regime. We finally explore the role of health education provided in former communist countries in influencing the health gradient and discuss both methodological and empirical issues in measuring the causal effect of education on health.