Health and social welfare in Communist Czechoslovakia

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Characteristics

In the 1980s,

In 1984 life expectancy in Czechoslovakia was 67 years for men and 75 years for women. In 1950 women's life expectancy was approximately 4.6 years longer than men's; by 1983 this difference had increased to nearly 7.5 years. Infant mortality stood at 10.5 per 1,000 live births in 1984, down from 15.6 per 1,000 in 1975. As with medical care, the gap in life expectancy between the Czech lands and Slovakia was narrowed during this period.

Pensions

In 1985 slightly more than one-quarter of the Czechoslovak population received some kind of

A major factor influencing the birthrate was the abortion rate. The number of abortions fluctuated between the 1950s and 1980s, dropping in the early 1960s and the early 1970s. In 1985 there were reportedly 144,712 abortions, or 39 abortions per 100 pregnancies (33.5 per 100 in the Slovak Socialist Republic and 42.1 per 100 in the Czech Socialist Republic). It has been suggested that abortion has remained one of the most favored means of birth control, despite the risks involved. A 1986 change in the abortion law (eliminating the panel needed to approve a request for an abortion) suggested that the regime was giving up in its efforts to reverse at least this aspect of the adverse demographic trends.

Housing

Since statistics did not always provide a comparison between the numbers of households and existing housing units, the housing deficit remained difficult to gauge. A comparison of the number of marriages annually and construction of new 1 housing units between 1960 and 1975 shows that construction exceeded marriages only in 1975. The deficit was most acute in the 1960s, when an average of housing units was built for every 10 marriages; in 1985 the ratio rose to an average of 8.8 units per 10 marriages.

This approximation underestimated the housing deficit: it ignored divorces, the number of extended families living together who would have preferred separate housing, and the decay of old housing . Even waiting lists underestimated how inadequate housing was in the 1980s. Separate housing for single adults had such a low priority with planners that single adults found it difficult even to get on a housing list.

One of the factors contributing to the housing shortage was the low construction rate of rental housing. Major reasons for this were high

Despite substantial gains in the 1970s, Czechoslovakia entered the 1980s with a housing shortage that was likely to take years to remedy. In 1986 the government announced a slight cutback in new housing construction for the 1986–90 housing plan, further aggravating the situation.

References

This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Country Studies. Federal Research Division.

External links

• RFE Czechoslovak Unit, Blinken Open Society Archives, Budapest