
Yglesias posted a graph (and I love graphs) of the average female life expectancy in Russian over the last 50 years. It does look like, except for a small aberration in the years directly following the USSR's collapse, that the women in Russian actually live about two more years than they do now.
But I'm more interested in that little "aberration" of a drop in life expectancy of 4yrs during the USSR's fall. Russia never fully collapsed into an anarchic state like say, Somalia, but it did see a collapse of their economy and severe disorganization in it's public services. Now, it did all this at a time when there was no worldwide energy scarcity or no massive droughts/flood-based famines caused by global warming. Russia could very easily import any needed oil or food it couldn't produce for themselves. (USSR collapse expert Dmitry Orlov covers that import conversion on his blog.)
To me it leaves a frightening realization that even in scenario where oil and agribusiness are on life support somewhat functioning there's a good chance you'll see a decline in life expectancy. If you add in massive energy shortages and uncertain crop production you can end up with a pretty major decline.
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