title: Democratisation and health after the fall of the Wall.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The fall of the Wall in 1989 can be seen as a natural experiment in the epidemiological sense to further examine the relation between democracy and health.
  
  
  METHODS
  Ecological study in the 23 post-communist countries, during the last decade of the 20th century, exploring the relations between the level of democratisation and health, taking into account as relevant confounders wealth and the level of inequality.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A significant correlation (p<0.01) was found of the democratic deficit of the countries with the health indicators circa 2000, with values of Pearson's coefficient of -0.629 for life expectancy, 0.760 for infant mortality, and 0.555 for maternal mortality. These associations remain significant after adjustment by lineal regression for GNP per capita and the Gini coefficient, with R(2) values of 0.336 for life expectancy, 0.575 for infant mortality, and 0.529 for maternal mortality.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings add pieces of evidence to the previously reported cross sectional association between democracy and health.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, University of Alicante, Spain. carlos.alvarez@ua.es
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Alvarez-Dardet
authors.forename: Alvaro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Franco-Giraldo
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003709:Democracy; D005060:Europe; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007226:Infant Mortality; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008017:Life Expectancy; D008428:Maternal Mortality; D011634:Public Health / Q000191:economics