Mortality by Educational Level in Russia

Earlier papers revealed educational differences in mortality in Russia in 1970’s–1980’s were at least as significant as in Western countries, and were largely similar to those observed in Eastern Bloc. Starting from 1998 there is a little knowledge about socio-economic characteristics of mortality since data collection has been discontinued and resumed only in 2011. Contemporary vital statistics on death is suffering from missing data on educational attainment of deceased (25,4% of all records in 2015). By proposing three approaches to overcome difficulties with missing data this paper presents new estimates of life expectancy at age 30 (LE30) by educational attainment among Russian men and women in 2015. According to the third approach absolute mortality differences between high-educated and low-educated is 17,5 years for men, 14,5 – for women. Despite the fact that LE30 has been growing for the last decade and has returned to the level of the late 1980’s, the level of absolute and relative inequality in mortality has increased. In terms of the causes of death mortality burden of infectious and parasitic diseases, external causes, diseases of the respiratory organs is more unevenly distributed between educational groups in modern Russia and is primarily on low-educated population.