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The transition to market economies in many post-communist societies of the former Soviet Union and other former eastern bloc countries in Europe has a produced a "demographic collapse," a recent report by the United Nations Development Programme has found. Among the most serious findings is a four year drop in life expectancy among Russian men since 1980, from 62 years to 58.
The development programme's report also noted significant drops in life expectancy in Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania. The immediate cause of the rising mortality, said the report, is the "rise in...