Elizabeth Brainerd

Women in Transition: Changes in Gender Wage Differentials in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Under state socialism, women fared relatively well in the labor market: female-male wage differentials were similar to those in the West, and female labor force participation rates were among the highest in the world. Have these women maintained their relative positions since the introduction of market reforms? The author investigates this question using household surveys from seven formerly socialist countries. The results indicate a consistent increase in female relative wages across Eastern Europe, and a substantial decline in female relative wages in Russia and Ukraine. Women in the latter countries have been penalized by the tremendous widening of the wage distribution in those countries. Increased wage inequality in Eastern Europe has also depressed female relative wages, but these losses have been more than offset by gains in rewards to observed skills and by an apparent decline in discrimination against women.

Economic reform and mortality in the former Soviet Union: A study of the suicide epidemic in the 1990s

Male suicide rates in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic countries increased substantially in the early 1990s and are now the highest in the world. To what extent is this suicide epidemic explained by the macroeconomic instability experienced by these countries in that period? Fixed effects regressions across 22 transition economies indicate that male suicide rates are highly sensitive to the state of the macroeconomy, suggesting that the steep and prolonged declines in GDP in the western countries of the former Soviet Union may have been partly to blame for the suicide epidemic. Evidence also indicates that the general adult male mortality crisis in the region had a ‘feedback’ effect on suicide rates, with the loss of a spouse or friend - or declining life expectancy itself - contributing to rising suicide rates. Female suicide rates, in contrast, are insensitive to the state of the macroeconomy and are more strongly related to alcohol consumption.

Importing Equality? The Impact of Globalization on Gender Discrimination

A key dynamic implication of the Becker model of discrimination (1957) is that increased product market competition will drive out costly discrimination in the long run. This paper tests that hypothesis by examining the impact of globalization on gender discrimination in manufacturing industries. Because concentrated industries face little competitive pressure, an increase in competition from trade should reduce the residual gender wage gap more in these industries than in competitive industries. The authors compare the change in the gender wage gap between 1976 and 1993 in concentrated versus competitive manufacturing industries, using the latter as a control for changes in the gender wage gap that are unrelated to competitive pressures. They find that while trade increases wage inequality by modestly reducing the relative wages of less-skilled workers, at the same time it appears to benefit women by reducing the ability of firms to discriminate.

The Demographic Transformation of Post-Socialist Countries: Causes, Consequences, and Questions

In May 2006, Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced a radical new pack-age of pronatalist policies designed to halt, and possibly reverse, the steep decline in Russia’s birth rate over the past 15 years. The package included increased child benefits, longer maternity leave, and a payment of over US

Fertility Trends in the Formerly Socialist Countries of Europe

9,000 to each woman who has a second child. While economists and demographers have long debated the efficacy of such pronatalist government policies in raising birth rates, the intention of this package of measures was clear—to stop the large declines in population that have affected Russia since the early 1990s.

Winners and Losers in Russia's Economic Transition

This article is a revision of the previous edition article by A. Avdeev, volume 8, pp. 5602–5605,