Changes in population health in the context of socio-economic and political changes in the countries of former Yugoslavia

Spasenoska, Dijana (2024) Changes in population health in the context of socio-economic and political changes in the countries of former Yugoslavia. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

The dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s was a period marked with political turmoil, wars and civil unrests. The resulting dynamic changes of social determinants of health and their potential to exacerbate health differences underscore the importance of studying health in transition. Health in transition in Yugoslavia has been greatly understudied due to the lack of accessible and comparable data. In this thesis, I bridge the gap in the literature, and I analyse the changes in population health in the 6 countries of ex-Yugoslavia during times of socio-economic and political changes. I compile and digitalize mortality data from each of the 6 countries in the period from 1970 to 2017, and subsequently develop a database of 584 life tables to allow for cross country comparison. Then I provide a first analysis of the dynamics of change in life expectancy, and I decompose the contribution of different age groups and causes of death to the change. I find that prior to the dissolution of Yugoslavia increases in life expectancy in all countries were attributable to reductions in infant and child mortality. During the transition, the dynamics of change in life expectancy diverged across countries. In recent years, the increase was driven by reduction in mortality at older ages due to non- communicable diseases. Since sex-differences in life expectancy emerge as a prominent dimension of health inequality, I decompose the age and cause specific contributions to the sex difference. As Slovenia is the country with the highest life expectancy, in the first case study I analyse how lifespan inequality changed in the context of rapid life expectancy increase. In the final case study, I focus on Serbia, and estimate the proportion in health differences attributable to individual and contextual differences. The findings of this thesis contribute to our understanding of health in times of political and socio-economic transition by providing a unique perspective, an increase in life expectancy during a violent transition. The analysis on recent years is relevant to policy makers to identify relevant target population groups for further reduction in mortality. Most importantly, I contribute to the field by digitalizing mortality data and creating a database of life tables to encourage further studies on this understudied region.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2024 Dijana Spasenoska
Library of Congress subject classification:	D History General and Old World > DR Balkan Peninsula H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine
Sets:	Departments > Social Policy
Supervisor:	Gjonça, Arjan and Özcan, Berkay
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4824

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