https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6364-0716
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ABSTRACT
This paper is the first comparative analysis of mortality transition, as part of the demographic transition, in all the three Baltic countries during the interwar period. We address the following research questions: Which type of mortality transition is exemplified by the interwar Baltic countries’ mortality patterns? Was the mortality transition completed already before WWII? What were Baltic cross-country differences in the advancement of mortality and demographic transitions? We present and use newly constructed life tables for Lithuania, 1925–1934, and draw on the work of the Estonian demographer Kalev Katus (1955–2008), publishing for the first time his life tables for Latvia in 1925–1938. Main findings: The three countries were part of the Western model of mortality transition. However, the reduction of infant and childhood mortality was lagging in Lithuania. Women of childbearing age in Estonia and mainland Latvia, as a result of earlier fertility decline, experienced longer life expectancy due to the decreased mortality from birth complications. Nevertheless, in all three countries mortality transition was still incomplete by WWII. A comparison of death causes in 1925–1939 serves to corroborate the last conclusion.
Acknowledgements
This study was possible thanks to tremendous prior efforts of data collection and expert work by Kalev Katus, from the Estonian Interuniversity Population Research Centre and Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia, Allan Puur, from the Estonian Institute for Population Studies, Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia; Vlada Stankūnienė, from the Lithuanian Demographers Association, Vilnius, Lithuania, Juris Krūminš, from the University of Latvia, Riga, Latvia, France Meslé, from the INED, Paris, France, and Jacques Vallin, from the INED, Paris, France. We also thank anonymous reviewers for criticisms and advice which did help to improve our text, Aelita Ambrulevičiūtė and Vaidas Morkevičius for their research assistance. Ola Honningdal Grytten, Martin Klesment, Ilmārs Mežs, Zenonas Norkus acknowledge financial support from the Baltic Research Programme project ‘Quantitative Data About Societal and Economic Transformations in the Regions of the Three Baltic States During the Last Hundred Years for the Analysis of Historical Transformations and the Overcoming of Future Challenges’ (BALTIC100), project No. EEA-RESEARCH-174, under the EEA Grant of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway Contract No. EEZ/BPP/VIAA/2021/3.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Ptukha (Citation1924) provides early version of these life tables, republished in 1960.
2 Norkus (Citation2017) provides life tables for 1932 for both genders. However, in these tables end of the year populations were used, differently from the present tables with midyear population.
4 In 1929, only 6.3% of Lithuanian mothers delivered in maternity homes or hospitals, and by 1940 this number increased only to 17% (Neniškis, Citation1998, p. 4).
5 Here we assume that positive relation between crowding (number of children in a household) and infant mortality, negative relation between birth spacing and infant mortality, as well as negative relation between number of children and stature or health of surviving children as adults, established in the literature (e.g. Cage & Foster, Citation2002; Molitoris, Kieron, & Kolk, Citation2019; Öberg, Citation2017), did hold also for interwar Baltic countries, although the replication of this research for these country cases would be very useful.
6 See Roser, Ortiz-Ospina, & Ritchie (Citation2013).
7 The GDP numbers for Norway in the MPD (Citation2020) are probably underestimated due to the problem with oil prices and PPP calculations. Low oil prices in the base year would make the earlier Norwegian GDP low too. See Grytten (Citation2022).