The health situation in Russia has often been characterized as a long‐running crisis. From the 1960s until the beginning of the 2000s, the declining life expectancy trend was substantially interrupted only twice: once in the mid‐1980s as a result of Gorbachev's anti‐alcohol campaign, and again at the end of the 1990s as a result of the “rebound” effect following the dramatic rise in mortality associated with the acute socioeconomic crisis. In both cases, the progress made proved to be short‐lived. A third mortality decline in Russia began in 2003 and is still ongoing. We investigate the components and driving forces of this new development, in particular the role played by cardiovascular diseases. Using cause‐specific mortality data, we identify the main features of the recent improvements and compare these features with those observed in selected European countries, specifically France, Poland, and Estonia. Our aim is to gauge whether the features of the improvements in these countries are similar to those of the recent advancements made in Russia. Although the recent improvements in Russia have features in common with initial stages of prior mortality declines in other countries and may support optimism about the future, a return to mortality stagnation cannot be ruled out.

The number of relatives and geographical proximity between them affects informal support provided to older persons. In this study, we investigate whether (a) childless persons and parents living remotely from their adult children experience similar shortages in informal support, and (b) whether neighbours, friends and other non-family helpers compensate for these shortages. On the basis of Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) data for 12 European countries, we estimate the probability and amount of informal non-financial support received by persons aged 65 and over who remain childless or live at different distances to their children. The contribution of non-family individuals is rather complementary to the help from family. Parents residing in the proximity of their children rely almost exclusively on family; as the geographical distance between adult children and older parents increases, the probability and amount of non-family support increase as well. But childless individuals differ from parents of remotely living children: the former rely on smaller support networks and resort more often to other relatives than the latter. Non-family individuals compensate for the scarcity of informal support only in the case of parents of distant children, but not in the case of childless individuals.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Poland became the main sending country in Central Europe. Despite the lack of institutional barriers to settling in member states of the European Union since 2004, many Polish migrants continued to undertake temporary labour mobility including repetitive, back‐and‐forth moves. This article examines the relationship between migrants' back‐and‐forth international mobility and their activity in the labour market of the sending country. It describes changes in the labour market status of migrants engaging in repetitive migration, based on two surveys conducted in Poland in 2001 and 2007, complemented by qualitative follow‐ups. The results show that migrants deploy various economic strategies: reconcile employment in both countries; abandon jobs in Poland; or only remain economically active abroad. In many cases back‐and‐forth migration led to being unemployed in Poland, which constitutes an important challenge for labour market policy. Local Public Employment Services (PES) should be able to distinguish unemployed persons who undertake repetitive, back‐and‐forth migration. Local PES should include profiles of unemployed persons and questions about migration experience and its character: labour/non‐labour migration, short‐/long‐term, single/repetitive, etc. For each unemployed person, the process of career guidance provided by the local PES should assess the possible impact of back‐and‐forth migration on the labour market situation in Poland. The back‐and‐forth migration should be taken into account at the level of career guidance supplied by Career Centres at high schools and universities.

After several decades of stagnation, mortality in most Central European countries started to decrease after 1989. The Czech Republic and Poland were the first former Communist countries in this region to experience a rapid and sustained increase in life expectancy. This study focuses on the trends in cause-of-death mortality that have contributed to the recent progress in these two countries. The analysis is based on the cause-of-death time series (1968–2013) reconstructed in accordance with the 10th ICD revision, which makes the data fully comparable over the full period under study. Actual trends in cause-specific mortality are presented, and age, sex and causes of death components of life expectancy changes are disentangled. In both countries, the reduction in cardiovascular mortality at adult and old ages was crucial for the increase in life expectancy after 1991. Results are discussed in the context of institutional changes that occurred after the fall of Communism, such as the reorientation of health policies and the emergence of non-governmental organizations. Changes in health-related attitudes and behaviours as well as structural changes in societies, notably the rising share of persons with tertiary education, are also discussed.