ABSTRACT
Russia’s transition from a socialist system to a market economy resulted in an exceptionally dramatic social crisis. Increases in poverty, inequality and mortality are its indicators. In the center of the so-called post-socialist welfare crisis is the severe demographic crisis that Russia has been facing: a low birth rate combined with a low life expectancy – especially of Russian men, which reached as low as 57 years in 1994 – led to unequaled depopulation of 700,000 people per year at its worst. This is a far more severe population decline than in any other industrialized country in peacetime.
