The project describes and explains Soviet population dynamics since World War II from a comparative perspective. It entails evaluation and adjustment of published demographic data and estimation of age distributions, fertility schedules, and life tables for the Soviet Union as a whole, by region, and by ethnic group. Two comparative perspectives are combined: the crossregional and the crossnational. Soviet regional and ethnic subpopulations differ so much in demographic behavior that it is often misleading to speak of undifferentiated """"""""Soviet"""""""" demographic patterns. Crossnational comparison is important because there is a tendency to view Soviet demographic phenomena as unusual or unique, without an effort to compare Soviet demographic experience directly with that in other countries. Thus, this project seeks to determine what Soviet demographic patterns are unique and what aspects fit into the mainstream of world demographic experience. The methods of technical demography are combined with an extensive knowledge of Soviet society and Soviet data. Insufficient work has been done evaluating the quality of official Soviet demographic statistics. This complicates the analysis of Soviet demographic behavior, and limits our ability to separate artifact from reality. This is a renewal proposal. In the project's first three years, ten papers have been published or accepted for publication. In addition to continuing established lines of research, bibliographic and technical groundwork has been laid for additional research topics. The new work extends our research by focussing on health, old age, and labor force issues, from all-USSR, regional, and ethnic perspectives. It also expands explicit crossnational comparisons, including study of the relation between economic development and mortality.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HD019915-06
Application #
3317562
Study Section
Social Sciences and Population Study Section (SSP)
Project Start
1984-07-01
Project End
1989-09-29
Budget Start
1988-09-01
Budget End
1989-09-29
Support Year
6
Fiscal Year
1988
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Department
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
791277940
City
Ann Arbor
State
MI
Country
United States
Zip Code
48109
Anderson, B A; Katus, K; Puur, A et al. (1994) The validity of survey responses on abortion: evidence from Estonia. Demography 31:115-32
Anderson, B A; Silver, B D (1992) A simple measure of fertility control. Demography 29:343-56
Anderson, B A; Silver, B D (1985) Estimating census undercount from school enrollment data: an application to the Soviet censuses of 1959 and 1970. Demography 22:289-308