Much has been written about rising mortality in Russia, but things are actually getting better.
Life expectancy is considered a rough measure of a nation's health and economic environment.
In 1995, male life expectancy had fallen to just 58.4 years, an astonishing low number for an industrialized country. In Japan, for example, male life expectancy at birth is 77 years. Male life expectancy reached 61.3 years in 1998, a slow but consistent three-year improvement over 1995. Women, it should be noted, live far longer on average than men. Russian women had a life expectancy of 72.9 years in 1998, an advantage of 11.6 years over their male counterparts and the widest gap in the world.