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Many studies have shown that childhood circumstances can have long term consequences that persist until old age. To better understand the transmission of early life circumstances, this paper analyses the effects of health and financial situation during childhood on quality of life after retirement as well as the mediating role of later life health, educational level, and income in this association. Moreover, this study is the first to compare these pathways across European regions. The analyses are based on data of 13,092 retirees aged ≥ 60 and ≤ 85 years from the fifth wave of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) with full information on childhood and later life measures of health, educational level, financial situation, and quality of life as well as relevant covariates. Five European regions are studied: Central-Western Europe (Austria, Germany), Central-Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia), Northern Europe (Denmark, Sweden), Southern Europe (Italy, Spain), and Western Europe (Belgium, France, The Netherlands). Path analysis is used to identify the direct and indirect effects of childhood measures on quality of life. We find retirees’ quality of life to be associated with childhood finances and health in all five European regions. While both the direct and indirect effects of childhood health are rather moderate and homogeneous across regions, especially the direct effects of childhood finances on quality of life after retirement display a distinct North-South gradient being strongest in Southern Europe. Potential explanations for the regional variations are differences in the countries’ welfare systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between well-being inequality and the economic crisis for countries from Central and Eastern Europe. Using data from Life in Transition Surveys waves 2006 and 2010, we assess the level of happiness gap by computing the instrument-effect-corrected standard deviation. Our results indicate that the dispersion in self-reported well-being levels increased after the economic crisis in all considered countries. We also show that the life satisfaction variation is not necessarily higher for those who report being poor compared to those from the upper part of the income hierarchy. Results also suggest that in general the gaps are higher in the case of those who report being not affected at all by the economic crisis compared to those who report being affected to a large extent by the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore the challenge of studying geographies of Eastern Europe in Western Europe. It reflects on the growing relationships – imagined and material – between Eastern and Western Europe and engages in contemporary debates over ‘relational geographies’ to make a case for geographies which imagine our plural, European spatial connections, which connect different parts of the continent and which encourage the re-examination and renegotiation of ideas across East and West in the post-Cold War world. In these ways, the paper borrows from postcolonial frameworks and the ongoing reassessment of area studies to call for studies of Eastern and Western Europe which reinvigorate our "sense of Europe". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past years, new patt erns of regional disparities between metropolised core regions and the remaining parts of Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) have emerged. Such spatial disparities have lately fuelled concerns about further regional polarisation and the peripheralisation of non-metropolitan regions in particular. This is the case although balancing spatial development has been a major goal of European Regional Policy. The paper argues that there is a clear need to bett er understand the social, economic, discursive and political processes constituting regional polarisation and to conduct further research on approaches to deal with and respond to peripheralisation. The proposed research agenda focuses on a multi-scalar relation between core and peripheral regions and applies a process based dynamic understanding of peripherality and centrality. Following this, peripheralised regions bear agency capacities and cannot be seen as powerless victims of some overarching processes associated with the globalising economy. Applying the notions of polarisation and peripheralisation to guide further research, off ers multi-dimensional, multi-scalar and process based conceptualisations of regional development research. With the proposed research agenda, I would like to open up the discussion on new interpretations of the terms peripherality and centrality, rurality and urbanity, border and rural areas, core and peripheral regions, and contribute to the development of new approaches in multi-level governance and ultimately in regional policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of democracy in the communist countries, which generated profound social and economic transformation, was accompanied by a decline in fertility. We attempt to provide an overall survey on fertility since 1989 in ten Central and Eastern European Countries, members of the European Union, and to identify the variables which explain the fertility decline. We will use univariate and multivariate statistical analysis to identify disparities between the ten countries, and the variables which explain these differences. Also, we developed a panel econometric model to confirm the hypothesis of a similar pattern of evolution for fertility in these countries and that the decline in fertility can be explained both through demographic and economic variables. The decline in fertility can be explained by economic growth, marriage, divorce, abortion, and migration. The empirical evidence presented in this paper supports the view that the decline in fertility over the 1989s represents the continuation of a longstanding trend of the previous period, according to the demographic transition theory, but its speed and magnitude has been influenced by the new social and economic landscape. These results can be useful for public authorities of the CEE countries to rethinking demographic policies and to ensure the sustainability of demographic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The countries of Central and Eastern Europe have experienced a lot of changes at the end of the 20th century, including changes in the health care systems and especially in primary care. The aim of this paper is to systematically assess the position of family medicine in these countries, using the same methodology within all the countries. Methods: A key informants survey in 11 Central and Eastern European countries and Russia using a questionnaire developed on the basis of systematic literature review. Results: Formally, family medicine is accepted as a specialty in all the countries, although the levels of its implementation vary across the countries and the differences are important. In most countries, solo practice is the most predominant organisational form of family medicine. Family medicine is just one of many medical specialties (e.g. paediatrics and gynaecology) in primary health care. Full introduction of family medicine was successful only in Estonia. Conclusions: Some of the unification of the systems may have been the result of the EU request for adequate training that has pushed the policies towards higher standards of training for family medicine. The initial enthusiasm of implementing family medicine has decreased because there was no initiative that would support this movement. Internal and external stimuli might be needed to continue transition process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper attempts to improve current understanding of the economic value of biodiversity. Instead of the prevailing approach of using only one indicator of biodiversity (typically, species richness) we provide evidence that it is possible to value changes in a number of attributes which describe complex characteristics of biodiversity, based on ecological knowledge. The attributes used include structural, species and functional diversity. The empirical application is a choice experiment study conducted in the Białowieża Forest, Poland: our study is therefore also one of the first to cast light on the value of biodiversity protection in Eastern Europe. Interestingly, respondents valued passive protection regimes resulting in preservation of natural ecological processes. In addition, the respondents seemed to be concerned with the means, and not only the results of protection programmes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper contributes to the debate on the social impact of globalization. It focuses on the mediating role of the sectoral pattern of transnational production relocation to the postcommunist economies of Eastern Europe. We argue that the collapse of the socialist heavy industries and the eastward relocation of traditional light industries initially forced the social conditions of the East European countries to converge at the bottom and deepened the gap between the West and the East. Later, the eastward migration of high-skilled labor and capital-intensive industries and jobs led to decreasing social disparity between the West and some of the former socialist countries. However, convergence appears uncertain, costly, and uneven, and coincides with increasing social disparity within the group of East European new members and candidates of the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent changes in the security environment of Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus have been reshaping the strategies of the six small countries in the proximity of both the EU and Russia. Their attempts to take upon themselves their Soviet heritage and their sensitive geographical position were reflected by a mix of East-West orientations. Some of them chose to create stronger economic bonds with the EU members while others decided to anticipate Russian discontent in separatist areas they shelter and became members of the EEU. Regardless of their option, the Eastern Partnership members embarked? on a long road of political, social and economic changes, so that their stability and growth would become pillars of a stronger role on the regional and international arena in the future. The EU, in turn, has been supporting its partners to the East according to their level of commitment to reform and approximation, although the economic benefits of this relation are imperceptible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]