IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ece/dispap/2009_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public Health in Europe: The 2007-2009 Financial Crisis and UNECE Activities

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Shelburne

    (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe)

  • Claudia Trentini

    (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe)

Abstract

The economic and financial crisis of 2007-2009 had a serious impact on the larger European region. For western Europe this was the deepest economic downturn since the Second World War. Given the well-developed safety nets for this region the immediate impact on health is likely to be minor. However the crisis will negatively affect the long-run level of per capita income and has left government fiscal positions’ in a poor state; both of these developments will likely have some minor impact on health outcomes for years to come. The deterioration of government finances also raises a concern that the region’s contribution to global public health through its assistance programs may be negatively impacted. In the coming years, pollution control, including of green house gas emissions, is a major challenge for the region. Providing health care for an aging population is also a fundamental challenge for economies with problematic public finances. Eastern Europe and the European CIS were the most severely affected regions of the world. Despite the large economic downturns in these economies, this crisis was still not as great as that that occurred during the 1990s with their transition from planned economies to market economies. Although significant progress has been made in establishing social safety nets and public health programs in these countries over the last decade, these remain inadequate and as a result this economic crisis is likely to have a noticeable negative impact on public health throughout eastern Europe and the CIS. Even before the current economic downturn, there were a number of significant health concerns for eastern Europe and the CIS that were continuing to deteriorate which could have been significantly improved with realistic levels of public expenditures and the implementation of proper policies. The health care systems (often enterprise-based) and institutions collapsed during the transition due to the breakup of the economic and political systems and even the countries themselves (i.e., the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia). The poor health outcomes for the region are due to the fact that a number of diseases and social behaviors became established during the turmoil of the 1990s transition and did not recede as prosperity retuned after 2000. The increase in inequality that developed during the transition is reflected in growing inequalities for access to health care and in health care outcomes. Today, the region is characterized (relative to other regions with similar levels of income) by its high death rates from noncommunicable diseases. The issues of alcoholism and traffic fatalities are highlighted in this paper. For communicable diseases, the European CIS are central in the global fight against TB and HIV/AIDS.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Shelburne & Claudia Trentini, 2009. "Public Health in Europe: The 2007-2009 Financial Crisis and UNECE Activities," ECE Discussion Papers Series 2009_2, UNECE.
  • Handle: RePEc:ece:dispap:2009_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/oes/disc_papers/ECE_DP_2009-2.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2009
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ursula Hermelink & Claudia Trentini, 2009. "Gender-sensitive Economic Policies in the UNECE Region in the Context of the Economic and Financial Crisis," ECE Discussion Papers Series 2009_3, UNECE.
    2. Jaromir Cekota & Claudia Trentini, 2012. "Demographic pressures and the sustainability of social security in Emerging Europe and Central Asia," ECE Discussion Papers Series 2012_2, UNECE.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    health systems; economic crisis; transition economies; CIS; Russia; HIV; AIDS; Tuberculosis; road safety; pollution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • P20 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - General
    • P27 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Performance and Prospects
    • P29 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ece:dispap:2009_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Robert Shelburne (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eceunch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.