Equal before luck? Well-being consequences of personal deprivation and transition

Costa-Font, Joan ORCID: 0000-0001-7174-7919, Nicińska, Anna and Rosello-Roig, Melcior (2025) Equal before luck? Well-being consequences of personal deprivation and transition. Social Science & Medicine. ISSN 0277-9536 (In Press)

Text (Well_being_and_transition_shocks (3)) - Accepted Version Pending embargo until 1 January 2100. Download (365kB)

Abstract

Past trauma resulting from personal life shocks, especially during periods of particular volatility such as regime transition (or regime change), can give rise to significant long-lasting effects on people’s health and well-being. We study this question by drawing on longitudinal and retrospective data to examine the effect of past exposure to major individual-level shocks (specifically hunger, persecution, dispossession, and exceptional stress) on current measures of an individual’s health and mental well-being. We study the effect of the timing of the personal shocks, alongside the additional effect of ‘institutional uncertainty’ of regime change in post-communist European countries. Our findings are as follows: First, we document evidence of the detrimental effects of shocks on a series of relevant health and well-being outcomes. Second, we show evidence of more pronounced detrimental consequences of such personal shocks experienced by individuals living in formerly communist countries (which accrue to about 8% and 10% in the case of hunger and persecution, respectively) than in non-communist countries. The effects are robust and take place in addition to the direct effects of regime change and shocks.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	Health Policy
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D839 Post-war History, 1945 on
JEL classification:	I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I18 - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health H - Public Economics > H7 - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations > H75 - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare H - Public Economics > H7 - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations > H79 - Other
Date Deposited:	17 Mar 2025 15:36
Last Modified:	17 Mar 2025 15:39
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/127573

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