Open Lecture “Exploring the Determinants of Demographic Dynamics and Health in Belarus”

Author: BEROC Visiting Professor Aliaksandr Amialchuk (University of Toledo)
Topic: Exploring the Determinants of Demographic Dynamics and Health in Belarus
Date and time: May 15, 15:00 - 17:00
Place: IBB Business Center
Working language: English.

In the course of the lecture Aliaksandr Amialchuk presented his recent research in demography and public health in Belarus that he did in collaboration with other BEROC researchers based on Belarusian Household Survey of Income and Expenditure. In the working paper, “Smoking and Obesity Revisited: Evidence from Belarus”, the authors used instrumental variable strategy to estimate the effect of smoking on body mass index (BMI), on the probability of overweight and obese. Smoking was found to negatively affect these body size measures, and the negative effect of smoking increases in magnitude at the higher percentiles of the BMI distribution and with the length of smoking career. However, relatively small magnitudes of the estimated effects imply that any significant reduction in smoking is unlikely to significantly increase the prevalence of obesity. In the second paper, “Evidence from the Chernobyl Accident: the Effect on Schooling, Labor Market and Health Outcomes in Belarus” (Journal of Labor Research, 2012), the authors used difference-in-differences approach to uncover the effect of the 1986 Chernobyl accident on health and labor market outcomes in Belarus by using variation in doses of radiation by birth cohort and region. In the third paper, “Economic Determinants of Fertility in Belarus: a Micro-Data Analysis” (forthcoming in The Economics of Transition), the authors evaluated several explanations of the recent trends (1996-2007) in fertility in Belarus by looking at the factors influencing the probability of the first, second, and third births, for women aged below 30 and above 30. This provided evidence on the presence and the relative importance of the economic determinants, including income and wages, economic uncertainty, maternity and childcare benefits.