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. 2004 Nov;94(11):1894-904.
doi: 10.2105/ajph.94.11.1894.

The making and breaking of Yugoslavia and its impact on health

Stephen J Kunitz  1
Affiliations

The making and breaking of Yugoslavia and its impact on health

Stephen J Kunitz. Am J Public Health. 2004 Nov.

Abstract

The creation of nation-states in Europe has generally been assumed to be intrinsic to modernization and to be irreversible. The disintegration of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia demonstrates that the process is not irreversible. I argue that in the case of Yugoslavia, (1) disintegration was caused by the interaction between domestic policies with regard to nationalities and integration into the global economy and (2) the impact of the disintegration of the federation on health care and public health systems has been profound. Improving and converging measures of mortality before the collapse gave way to increasing disparities afterward. The lesson is that processes of individual and social modernization do not result in improvements in health and well-being that are necessarily irreversible or shared equally.

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Figures

FIGURE 1—
FIGURE 1—
Infant mortality rate (per 1000 live births) by year, Yugoslavia, 1950–1984. Source. Statistical Yearbook of Yugoslavia (Belgrade: Savezni Zavod za Statistiku, various years)
FIGURE 2—
FIGURE 2—
Per capita gross domestic product in 1995 US dollars in countries of the former Yugoslavia, 1990–2000. Source. World Bank. World Development Indicators [CD-ROM]. Washington, DC: World Bank; 2002.
FIGURE 3—
FIGURE 3—
Life expectancy at birth in countries of the former Yugoslavia, 1960–2000. Source. World Bank. World Development Indicators [CD-ROM]. Washington, DC: World Bank; 2002.
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References

    1. Brubaker R., Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 34.
    1. Ibid., 35.
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