ABSTRACT
Ellen Jones and Fred W. Grupp suggest that faulty Soviet data and unbalanced statistical manipulations by Western analysts are principally responsible for the impression that health conditions in the Soviet Union are in decline. Despite their admirable attempts at investigating the issue, Jones and Grupp have stumbled into many of the pits that observers of Soviet society and specialists in demographic analysis must learn to avoid. A more useful comparison of health levels in European Russia and the West can be made with life expectancy estimates from the US Census Bureau. Life expectancy rose by more than a year in both the United States and West Germany between 1970 and 1975; by contrast, the United States Census Bureau estimates that it fell by nearly a year in the Soviet Union. There is no prima facie reason to expect greater numbers of graduates from Soviet medical institutions, or greater amounts of Soviet infant formula, to push infant mortality rates down.
