Ethnic Differentials in Mortality in Kyrgyzstan

Michel Guillot, University of Wisconsin at Madison

This paper examines mortality by ethnic group in the former Soviet Republic of Kyrgyzstan before and after the break-up of the Soviet Union, and to study the extent to which there has been a differential effect of the health crisis on the various ethnic groups of this population. Due to a lack of available data, no studies have been able to show whether unusual mortality patterns recorded in Kyrgyzstan are attributable to data errors, or whether they are real and associated with specific risk factor distributions. In this paper, the range of uncertainty is narrowed by using newly-available census and vital registration data from the National Statistical Committee of the Kyrgyz Republic. A particular focus of this research is infant and child mortality by ethnic group.