Conclusion

Abstract

Over the course of the twentieth century, Ukraine was confronted with two very different types of major health crises. Firstly, in the 1930s and 1940s it experienced very heavy losses as a result of famine, war and political turmoil. The immediate consequences of these appalling setbacks were so severe that life expectancy at birth in some years fell to unimaginably low levels: in 1933, at the height of the Great Famine, 11 years for females and just 7 years for males. Yet, each time, these large-scale crises remained very circumstantial in nature, like those of the more remote past. Once the crisis had ended, health trends followed their previous course again and, in the twentieth century, mortality declined steeply. In contrast, from the mid-1960s onwards, a new type of crisis arose, bringing a lasting reversal of past trends: the increase in life expectancy for females came to a complete halt, and male life expectancy declined strongly year on year.