Vladimir Shkolnikov

• Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Objectives To assess disparities in mortality by socioeconomic status in Germany. Design and participants We analyse a large administrative dataset of the German Pension Fund (DRV), including 27 million person-years of exposure and 42 000 deaths in 2013. The data cover the economically active population, stratified by sex and by East and West. Ou...

Background. Although estimates of socioeconomic mortality disparities in Germany exist, the trends in these disparities since the 1990s are still unknown. This study examines mortality trends across socioeconomic groups since the late 1990s among retired German men aged 65 and above. Methods. Large administrative data sets were used to estimate mo...

Background: Since 2005, Russia has made substantial progress, experiencing an almost doubling of per-capita gross domestic product by purchasing power parity (GDP [PPP]) to US$24 800 and witnessing a 6-year increase in life expectancy, reaching 71·4 years by 2015. Even greater gains in GDP (PPP) were seen for Moscow, the Russian capital, reaching...

Research indicates that women have higher levels of physical disability and depression and lower scores on physical performance tests compared to men, while the evidence for gender differences in self-rated health is equivocal. Scholars note that these patterns may be related to women over-reporting and men under-reporting health problems, but gend...

Background Although women are less healthy than men with respect to physical health and depression, gender differences in morbidity and self-rated health (SRH) are less consistent. Female disadvantage in SRH has been partially explained by women’s preponderance to report poor health. Although more recent studies challenge gender stereotypical treat...

Russia has one of the highest rates of cardiovascular disease in the world. The International Project on Cardiovascular Disease in Russia (IPCDR) was set up to understand the reasons for this. A substantial component of this study was the Know Your Heart Study devoted to characterising the nature and causes of cardiovascular disease in Russia by co...

Russia has one of the highest rates of cardiovascular disease in the world. The International Project on Cardiovascular Disease in Russia (IPCDR) was set up to understand the reasons for this. A substantial component of this study was the Know Your Heart Study devoted to characterising the nature and causes of cardiovascular disease in Russia by co...

Russia has one of the highest rates of cardiovascular disease in the world. The International Project on Cardiovascular Disease in Russia (IPCDR) was set up to understand the reasons for this. A substantial component of this study was the Know Your Heart Study devoted to characterising the nature and causes of cardiovascular disease in Russia by co...

Occasionally, there is a need to split aggregated fertility data into a fine grid of ages. For this purpose, several disaggregation methods have been developed. Yet these methods have some limitations. We seek to identify a method that satisfies the following criteria: 1) shape-the estimated fertility curves should be plausible and smooth; 2) fit-t...

After several decades of negative trends and short-term fluctuations, life expectancy has been increasing in Russia since 2004. Between 2003 and 2014, the length of life rose by 6.6 years among males and by 4.6 years among females. While positive trends in life expectancy are observed in all regions of Russia, these trends are unfolding differently...

Background This study compares handgrip strength and its association with mortality across studies conducted in Moscow, Denmark, and England. Materials The data collected by the Study of Stress, Aging, and Health in Russia, the Study of Middle-Aged Danish Twins and the Longitudinal Study of Aging Danish Twins, and the English Longitudinal Study of...

Hazard ratios for grip strength per 1-kg increase in total and gender-specific samples of Muscovite, Danish, English populations. (DOCX)

Hazard ratios for grip strength per 1-kg increase in men and women in Moscow, Denmark, and England. (DOCX)

This study proposes a new decomposition method that permits a difference in an aggregate measure at a final time point to be split into additive components corresponding to the initial differences in the event rates of the measure and differences in trends in these underlying event rates. For instance, when studying divergence in life expectancy, t...

Background Although excessive alcohol-related mortality in the post-Soviet countries remains the major public health threat, determinants of this phenomenon are still poorly understood. Aims We assess simultaneously individual- and area-level factors associated with an elevated risk of alcohol-related mortality among Lithuanian males aged 30–64....

Administrative division of Lithuania. (DOCX)

Supplementary information for the models presented in Tables 1 and 2 of the main text. (DOCX)

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0159809.].

Since the mid-2000s, after a few decades of negative trends and fluctuations, Russia has experienced the longest and most stable period of life expectancy increasing for the entire period of observation which was determined not only by a decrease in mortality at the middle ages, but also at the old ages. This period has been marked by a very fast i...

Background Reliable and comparable data on causes of death are crucial for public health analysis, but the usefulness of these data can be markedly diminished when the approach to coding is not standardized across territories and/or over time. Because the Russian system of producing information on causes of death is highly decentralized, there may...

Background: Over the past half century the global tendency for improvements in longevity has been uneven across countries. This has resulted in widening of inter-country disparities in life expectancy. Moreover, the pattern of divergence appears to be driven in part by processes at the level of country groupings defined in geopolitical terms. A sys...

Background: Understanding the socioeconomic and regional divides in disability prevalence in India has considerable relevance for designing public health policies and programs. Objectives: The aim of the present study is to quantify the prevalence of disability by gender, region (rural and urban; states and districts), and caste. We also examine...

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Background Our aim in this study is to provide a systematic assessment of the site-specific cancer survival rates of patients with different educational levels, using population-based census-linked registry data covering the entire population of Lithuania. Material and methods The study is based on the linkage between all records of the 2001 popula...

There are large socioeconomic disparities in adult mortality in Russia, although the biological mechanisms are not well understood. With data from the study of Stress, Aging, and Health in Russia (SAHR), we use Gompertz hazard models to assess the relationship between educational attainment and mortality among older adults in Moscow and to evaluate...

Despite progress made in recent decades, infant and neonatal mortality rates (NMRs) in India have remained high compared to neighbouring developing countries. This study aims at establishing quantitative links between the relatively slow progress in fight against neonatal death at national level and strikingly varying mortality patterns at sub-nati...

Background: Most existing evidence on the socio-economic predictors of divorce in developed countries comes from the USA and from Western and Northern Europe. This study contributes to the scarce literature about socio-economic determinants of divorce in Central and Eastern Europe by examining the case of Lithuania. Objective: The study explores ho...

Objectives: We investigate relative mortality inequalities by education for detailed cancer sites and provide estimates of deaths which could have been avoided through the elimination of these inequalities. Methods: A census-linked dataset based on a follow-up of all residents registered in the 2001 census was used for the analysis. Mortality ra...

In the second half of the 20th century, the advances in human longevity observed have been accompanied by an increase in the disparities between countries and regions. Education is one of the strongest predictors of life expectancy. Studies have shown that both relative and absolute mortality differences by education within countries have been incr...

Background: We present a method for reclassifying external causes of death categorized as "event of undetermined intent" (EUIs) into non-transport accidents, suicides, or homicides. In nations like Russia and the UK the absolute number of EUIs is large, the EUI death rate is high, or EUIs comprise a non-trivial proportion of all deaths due to exte...

The apparent contradiction that women live longer but have worse health than men, the so called male-female health-survival paradox, is very pronounced in Russia. The present study investigates whether men in Moscow are healthier than women at the level of biomarkers, and whether the associations between biomarkers and subjective health have sex-sp...

Objective: to assess factors associated with high blood pressure (HBP), elevated BP (EBP), isolated systolic hypertension (ISH) and arterial hypertension (AH) in representative Moscow sample. Design and method: A prospective study SAHR (Stress, Aging and Health in Russia) was carried out in a population-based sample of Muscovites aged > 55 years (N...

Numerous studies have addressed the problem of hazardous alcohol consumption, alcohol-related causes of death and their relationship to persisting excess male mortality in the countries of the former USSR. Yet relatively little is known about the geographical patterns of alcohol-related mortality within these countries and the cross-border continui...

The mechanisms of increasing human longevity have been elucidated in part by observing vanguard groups whose mortality has decreased more quickly than the rest of the population. In the case of the three Nordic countries (Finland, Norway and Sweden), this pioneer group is made up of married, highly educated individuals. Using individual census-link...

Persisting high levels of cardiovascular mortality in Russia present a specific case among developed countries. Application of cardiovascular risk prediction models holds great potential for primary prevention in this country. Using a unique set of cohort follow-up data from Moscow and Saint Petersburg, this study aims to test and recalibrate the S...

This study used population-based census-linked cancer incidence data to identify patterns of educational differentials in the risk of cancer by detailed sites of cancer in Lithuania. The study is based on the linkage between all records of the 2001 population census, all records from the Lithuanian Cancer Registry (cancer incidence), and all death...

The health situation in Russia has often been characterized as a long-running crisis. From the 1960s until the beginning of the 2000s, the declining life expectancy trend was substantially interrupted only twice: once in the mid-1980s as a result of Gorbachev's anti-alcohol campaign, and again at the end of the 1990s as a result of the “rebound” ef...

Do Vanguard Populations Pave the Way Towards Higher Life Expectancy among Other Population Groups ? Do vanguard populations open new frontiers of survival and longevity that will eventually be reached by others ? The main aim of this study is to identify the extent to which the non-vanguard populations in Finland, Norway, and Sweden might follow th...

Russia has very high mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD), with evidence that heavy drinking may play a role. To throw further light on this association we have studied the association of alcohol with predictors of CVD risk including B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP). Levels of BNP increase primarily in response to abnormal cardiac chamber wa...

BACKGROUND After a long decline, life expectancy in Russia substantially increased in 2004-2010; this is the longest period of health improvement that has been observed in the country since 1965. This study is the first analysis of this positive trend. OBJECTIVES We seek to determine the causes and age groups that account for the additional years o...

Abstract Allostatic load theory implies a relationship between exposure to psychological stress and multi-system physiological dysregulation. We used data from population-based samples of men and women in Russia (Moscow; n=1800; age, mean 68.5 yrs), Taiwan (n=1036; 65.5 yrs), and the United States (US; n=1054; 58 yrs), which are likely to vary wide...

The countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States differ substantially in their post-Soviet economic development but face many of the same challenges to health and health systems. Life expectancies dropped steeply in the 1990s, and several countries have yet to recover the levels noted before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Cardiovascula...

Background: Although socioeconomic mortality differences in Germany are well documented, trends in group-specific mortality and differences between the eastern and the western parts of the country remain unexplored. Methods: Population and death counts by level of lifetime earnings (1995-1996 to 2007-2008) and broad occupational groups (1995-199...

The Russian population continues to face political and economic challenges, has experienced poor general health and high mortality for decades, and has exhibited widening health disparities. The physiological factors underlying links between health and socioeconomic position in the Russian population are therefore an important topic to investigate....

In the 1989 census, the population of Ukraine included 22% ethnic Russians, which prompted us to ask: is this strong Russian presence in Ukraine a reason for the relatively small difference observed between Ukraine and Russia in age-specific patterns of mortality?

In Chaps. 2 and 3, we reconstructed annual sex-specific and age-specific mortality trends from the second quarter of the twentieth century, which had been seriously disrupted by the crises of the 1930s and 1940s; in Chap. 4, we were able to correct the standard estimates for the second half of the century, taking into account under-registration of...

Two sorts of relationships can exist between trends in a population’s health and trends in the mortality of successive birth cohorts. Firstly, in a period of long-term health improvements, the different cohorts see gradual benefits from this progress; but each new cohort benefits from it more, since it enjoys it sooner and therefore for a longer pa...

We report analyses of regional trends in overall and cause-specific mortality in Belarus for the period 1990-2007. We explore the respective spatial patterns and attempt to determine the factors responsible for the regional mortality variation. The results show that inter-regional mortality differentials tend to rise, mainly because of the growing...

Russia has experienced massive fluctuations in mortality at working ages over the past three decades. Routine data analyses suggest that these are largely driven by fluctuations in heavy alcohol drinking. However, individual-level evidence supporting alcohol having a major role in Russian mortality comes from only two case-control studies, which co...

Until 1996, when INED published its work on trends in causes of death in Russia (Meslé et al. 1996), there had been no overall study of cause-specific mortality for the Soviet Union as a whole or for any of its constituent republics. Yet at least since the 1920s, all the republics had had a modern system for registering causes of death, and the inf...

Before assessing changes in age- and sex-specific patterns of mortality in Ukraine, we have to decide what line to take towards shortcomings, often mentioned in the literature, in recording deaths. In order to judge the quality of registration of deaths, reference is generally made to age-specific model life tables. Just as for Russia (Shkolnikov e...

Until the end of the 1990s, mortality patterns and trends in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were remarkably similar. However, from the year 2000 onwards, life expectancy trends in the three countries started to diverge. In particular, sustainable progress in Estonia over the period 2000–2007 contrasts with stagnation in Latvia, and even worsening tr...

The goal of this study is to estimate the prevalence of MetS, together with its components and correlates, among elderly Russians. Our population-based sample included randomly selected residents of Moscow aged 55 and older: 955 women with an average age of 67.6, and 833 men with an average age of 68.9. MetS was defined according to National Choles...

National science academies represent intellectual elites and vanguard groups in the achievement of longevity. We estimated life expectancy (LE) at age 50 of members of the British Royal Society (RS) for the years 1670-2007 and of members of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) for the years 1750-2006. The longevity of academicians was higher than...

We analyze trends in best-practice life expectancy among female cohorts born from 1870 to 1950. Cohorts experience declining rather than constant death rates, and cohort life expectancy usually exceeds period life expectancy. Unobserved mortality rates in non-extinct cohorts are estimated using the Lee-Carter model for mortality in 1960–2008. Best-...

This study examines discrepancies between census and death registry information in the reporting of the ethnicity of the deceased in Lithuania and shows how these reporting differences influence estimates of mortality inequality by ethnicity. This study uses a census-linked dataset provided by Statistics Lithuania. The data include all deaths and p...

The study examines overall and region-specific mortality changes and regional mortality variation in India since the 1970s, using data from the Sample Registration System (SRS). An evaluation of the quality of SRS data confirms their reliability for children and adults under age 60. The results suggest the convergence of mortality across the region...

Studies on socioeconomic health disparities often suffer from a lack of uniform data and methodology. Using high quality, census-linked data and sensible inequality measures, this study documents the changes in absolute and relative mortality differences by education in Finland, Norway and Sweden over the period 1971 to 2000. The age-standardised m...

Patterns of diversity in age at death are examined using e †, a dispersion measure that equals the average expected lifetime lost at death. We apply two methods for decomposing differences in e †. The first method estimates the contributions of average levels of mortality and mortality age structures. The second (and newly developed) method returns...

Until the end of the 1990s, mortality patterns and trends in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were remarkably similar. However, from the year 2000 onwards, life expectancy trends in the three countries started to diverge. In particular, sustainable progress in Estonia over the period 2000-2007 contrasts with stagnation in Latvia, and even worsening tr...

Background There is a consensus that the large fluctuations in mortality seen in Russia in the past two decades can be attributed to trends in alcohol consumption. However, the precise mechanisms linking alcohol to mortality from circulatory disease remain unclear. It has recently been argued that a substantial number of such deaths currently ascri...

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia were quite comparable in terms of their socioeconomic development. Despite some differences in overall mortality levels, the three former Soviet republics were also very close to each other in terms of directions of mortality trends and age- and cause-specific mortality pattern...

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia were quite comparable in terms of their socioeconomic development. Despite some differences in overall mortality levels, the three former Soviet republics were also very close to each other in terms of directions of mortality trends and age- and cause-specific mortality pattern...

Estimates of mortality under age 60 in India and its states, 1970-2004 Abstract In this report, we provide uniformly calculated measures of mortality under age 60 in India and its 16 major states for the period 1970-2004. The mortality estimates are calculated using the data from the Sample Registration System of India (SRS). Evaluation of the SRS...

Prior research has revealed large differences in health and mortality across countries, socioeconomic groups, and individuals. Russia experiences one of the world's highest levels of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, great mortality differences within the population, and a heavy burden of ill health. Psychological stress has been suggested as...

Russia remains in the grip of a mortality crisis in which alcohol plays a central role. In 2007, male life expectancy at birth was 61 years, while for females it was 74 years. Alcohol is implicated particularly in deaths among working-age men. To review the current state of knowledge about the contribution of alcohol to the continuing very high mor...

Until recently data on mortality by socioeconomic status were not available for the initial period of mortality increase in the former Soviet Union from 1965 to 1979. Newly discovered data from the Russian State Archive of Economics allow us to close this gap and to compare mortality trends in urban Latvia and several urban areas of Russia with the...

This study examines the relationship between growing inequality within the population, and the general mortality decline in Finland after 1971. The general mortality trend is considered as a simultaneous shift of population groups toward lower mortality over time, with the group-specific mortality rates linked to the mortality trend in the best pra...

A sociological framework is proposed to better understand how spatial characteristics translate into people's physical and psychosocial conditions that are relevant to their health. In particular, high susceptibility to poor health among specific adult population groups is analyzed in terms of exclusion from or inadequate participation in a society...

This study examines the variation in mortality and mortality trends among different regions in India since the 1970s using data from the Sample Registration System (SRS). Evaluation of the SRS data quality confirms reliability for children and adults under the age of 60 years. Analysis of temporary life expectancy between the exact ages of 0 and 60...

We examined mortality among working-age Russian men whose identity could not be determined, focusing on where and how they died. Employing micro-data from deaths that occurred in Izhevsk (Ural region) between June 2004 and September 2005, we analysed the characteristics of decedent men aged 25-54 (n = 2158). Differences between completely identifie...

Socioeconomic differences in old-age mortality have not been studied in Germany. This study fills in the gap, evaluating mortality and life expectancy differentials among retired German men aged 65+ in 2003. Mortality rates are calculated from the administrative database on all public pensions and deaths of pensioners in 2003. Relative mortality ra...

Migrant mortality in Europe was found to be lower than mortality of host populations. In Germany, residents with migrant background constitute nearly one tenth of the population aged 65+ with about 40% of them being foreigners. The German Pension Scheme follows vital status of pensioners very accurately. Mortality re-estimation reveals two-fold und...

The reason for the low life expectancy in Russian men and large fluctuations in mortality are unknown. We investigated the contribution of alcohol, and hazardous drinking in particular, to male mortality in a typical Russian city. Cases were all deaths in men aged 25-54 years living in Izhevsk occurring between Oct 20, 2003, to Oct 3, 2005. Control...

Earlier studies have found large and increasing with time differences in mortality by education and marital status in post-Soviet countries. Their results are based on independent tabulations of population and deaths counts (unlinked data). The present study provides the first census-linked estimates of group-specific mortality and the first compar...

What proportion of women bear what proportion of children? Is reproduction concentrated among relatively few women or is it more equally spread among most women? We address these questions by examining concentration curves and summary statistics for female cohorts with completed fertility in the United States and 18 European countries. Concentratio...

It is thought that excessive alcohol consumption is related to the high mortality among working age men in Russia. Moreover it has been suggested that alcohol is a key proximate driver of the very sharp fluctuations in mortality seen in this group since the mid-1980s. Designing an individual-level study suitable to address the potential acute effec...

Demographers have long been aware that death rates calculated using statistics derived from vital records (the deceased person’s status reported at the time of death by the proxy informant) as numerator and from census reports as denominator do not always give a reliable measurement of sociocultural mortality differences, notably on account of freq...

When measuring social differences in mortality in the former socialist countries of central and eastern Europe, it has been impossible, until now, to link census data and vital records to avoid the classic problem of bias caused by inconsistency between the individual status recorded in the census and that reported at the time of death. The results...