Mortality convergence and divergence among selected European countries: methodology and application to cause-specific data and selected regions
Abstract
There are three main goals of the paper: (1) Describe the main convergence-divergence tendencies of mortality in Europe above all with concentration on development from the end of the 1980s where many political and social changes occurred in Europe. The study focuses mainly on development within the Central and Eastern European countries which are often not studied in detail in similar research. (2) Introduction of a method of measuring and analyzing the convergence tendencies of selected country (the Czech Republic is chosen as an example) to other countries with lower mortality. (3) Study the convergence-divergence tendencies in more detail - taking into account also the main groups of causes of death.
This part of analysis is more focused above all on the Central and Eastern European countries during the last two decades. Main results: The main results confirm the generally known existence of various stages of convergence and divergence tendencies of mortality in Europe after the World War II.
Moreover, it is possible to illustrate the contemporary and recent development within the Central and Eastern European countries, where divergent tendencies started to prevail already in the 1980s and 1990s. This was caused above all by mortality crises in the Eastern European countries and rapid positive development in the Central Europe.
However, also within the Central European countries, which are often taken as a rather homogeneous region, there some significant differences could be found. The second part of the analysis introduces those specifics, which are tied with different causes of death and their development in time.
The Central European countries undergo similar development according to mortality from cardiovascular diseases; however, significant differences could be traced according to mortality from malignant neoplasms. Those countries are still stigmatized by the smoking habits of inhabitants as well as more or less successful screening preventive programs.