HeavenlyPossum on Nostr: After the Great Recession of 2007-2009, researchers discovered a seemingly ...
After the Great Recession of 2007-2009, researchers discovered a seemingly counter-intuitive effect: people were living longer in areas with higher unemployment.
Unemployment is usually associated with a host of medical, psychological, and social problems, because our society ties everything to employment, access to food and housing to a sense of purpose and self-worth.
But, in this case, it turned out that the benefits of a decline in air pollution overwhelmed the normal costs of unemployment. Fewer people driving to work, fewer offices and factories keeping the lights on, and thus cleaner air.
“The Great Recession substantially reduced mortality. We estimate that for every one-percentage- point increase in a Commuting Zone’s (CZ) unemployment rate between 2007-2009, its age-adjusted mortality rate fell by 0.5 percent. These mortality reductions appear immediately, and they persist for at least 10 years. Since the average national unemployment rate increased by 4.6 percentage points between 2007 and 2009, our estimates imply that an increase in the unemployment rate of the magnitude of the Great Recession reduces the average, annual age-adjusted mortality rate by 2.3 percent for at least 10 years. To put this in perspective, these estimates imply that the Great Recession provided one in twenty five 55-year-olds with an extra year of life.”
https://users.nber.org/~notom/research/FNSZ_Great_Recession_jan2024.pdf
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Unemployment is usually associated with a host of medical, psychological, and social problems, because our society ties everything to employment, access to food and housing to a sense of purpose and self-worth.
But, in this case, it turned out that the benefits of a decline in air pollution overwhelmed the normal costs of unemployment. Fewer people driving to work, fewer offices and factories keeping the lights on, and thus cleaner air.
“The Great Recession substantially reduced mortality. We estimate that for every one-percentage- point increase in a Commuting Zone’s (CZ) unemployment rate between 2007-2009, its age-adjusted mortality rate fell by 0.5 percent. These mortality reductions appear immediately, and they persist for at least 10 years. Since the average national unemployment rate increased by 4.6 percentage points between 2007 and 2009, our estimates imply that an increase in the unemployment rate of the magnitude of the Great Recession reduces the average, annual age-adjusted mortality rate by 2.3 percent for at least 10 years. To put this in perspective, these estimates imply that the Great Recession provided one in twenty five 55-year-olds with an extra year of life.”
https://users.nber.org/~notom/research/FNSZ_Great_Recession_jan2024.pdf
1/2