Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/320137 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 11916
Version Description: 
This Version: June 2025
Publisher: 
CESifo GmbH, Munich
Abstract: 
We compare inequality and social mobility trends in European countries exposed to Soviet Communist (SC) regimes with those not exposed, using similar welfare mea-sures. We draw upon a rich retrospective dataset that collects relevant welfare measures across regimes, including information on living space and self-reported health, and relevant inequality and mobility indices for ordinal and categorical data. Our results suggest evidence of comparable welfare inequality trends in countries exposed to SC and those unexposed. Although individuals exposed to SC enjoyed higher levels of social mobility, differences in inequality across countries exposed to different regimes were negligible. A plausible explanation lies in the countervailing role of the welfare state in countries not exposed to SC and the inefficiency of the bureaucratic allocation of private goods aimed at reducing inequality in countries exposed to SC.
Subjects: 
bureaucracy
education
European Communist Regimes
health inequality
inequality
living space
self-reported health
social mobility
Soviet Communism
and welfare
JEL: 
I14
H53
I13
I38
N34
P20
P29
P36
P46
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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