METHODOLOGICAL PRACTICE AND PRACTICAL METHODO- LOGY: FIFTEENYEARS IN NONPROFIT STATISTICS
Renata Bachorczyk Nagy, István Sebestény · Repository of the Academy's Library (Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) · 2009
There have been three periods of epidemiological development in Hungary since the end of the Second World War: the hopeful beginnings between 1948 and 1966, the chronic, qualified epidemiological crisis from 1967 to 1993, and the period of renewal since 1994. In the first period, life expectancy increased by 8.5 years, in the second period it became 0.8 years shorter, but for the male population, 2.7 years shorter. In the last thir-teen years, life expectancy has lengthened by 4.1 years. In six decades, the age and the cause structure of mortality have changed substantially. In 1947, 48 percent of total deaths were among the over-sixties; in 2006 this figure was 78 percent. In the same period, the proportion of deaths from infectious diseases went down from 11.8 to 0.6 percent; from cardiovascular diseases, up from 22.9 to 50.6 percent; and from cancers, up from 9.5 to 24.6 percent. The secular trend of mortality – general, age-specific and cause-specific – to a large extent was badly influenced by the two fundamental changes in socioeconomic and political structure experienced by the country in a historically short period. The improvement since the transition will only be sustainable if today’s large geographical differences in mortality – the result of the social, rather than the physical environment – are reduced.