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, 376. ISSN 0277-9536

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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 examine the effect of the timing of the personal shocks, alongside the additional effect of ‘institutional uncertainty’ resulting from 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 persecution and hunger, respectively) than in non-communist countries. The effects are robust and take place in addition to the direct effects of regime change and exposure to personal shocks.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 Elsevier Ltd.
Divisions:	?? UNIT000020 ??
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:	06 May 2025 16:03
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/127573

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