Mortality Risk and Economic Recovery in Kazakhstan

Charles Becker, University of Colorado at Boulder
Dina Urzhumova, Pragma Corporation
Ai-Gul Seitenova, Pragma Corporation

This paper uses an extremely detailed vital statistics database maintained by the Kazakhstan National Statistics Agency to examine mortality risk by age group, gender, and region for the period 1995-2001. Using pooled data across time and region, we find that mortality risk is much higher for working age Kazakhstanis of European descent as opposed to ethnic Kazakhs. Much but not all of this difference is accounted for by much higher external cause (accidents and violent death) mortality among non-Kazakhs. Mortality risk appears to decline with measures of prosperity, but is greater in industrial regions and boom areas, suggesting that economic recovery will have a limited impact on health recovery -- even though it is clearly linked to declining risk of death from infections and respiratory diseases.