Meslé France. - Mortality in East European Countries. In most East European countries, life expectancy at birth has barely increased after the end of the 1960s, and in Poland and Bulgaria there has even been a decline in men's life expectancy. This increase in mortality was primarily caused by an increase in age-specific death rates at working ages, linked with an increase in cardiovascular and malignant disease. The first two parts of this paper deal with trends in cause-age specific mortality rates in each countries from the beginnings of the 1950s to the present day. In spite of the striking similarity in trends, conditions differ in individual countries. The situation in the GDR is more favourable than elsewhere; in Czechoslovakia, which was affected much earlier, conditions seems to have improved recently. In contrast, the situation in Yugoslavia, which used to be more encouraging, appears to be developing in the same way as elsewhere in Eastern Europe. It should also be noted that there are considerable differences between mortality rates in different regions of Poland and of Yugoslavia, and those of different social groups in Hungary. These differences are discussed in the third part of this paper.
