In the early 1990s some of the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia experienced a sharp drop in income. The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in large declines in GDP per capita, of about 30 to 35% between 1990 and the through year of 1998 (when it was at its minimum). As a result, poverty rates tripled, excess mortality increased, and life expectancy declined. In subsequent years as per capita incomes recovered the poverty rate dropped from 31.4% of the population to 19.6%. The average post-communist country had returned to 1989 levels of per-capita GDP by 2005, although as of 2015 some are still far behind that.