Economic crisis and stillbirth ratios: evidence from Southern Europe

Cleon Tsimbos, Georgia Verropoulou and Dimitra Petropoulou

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: In this paper we assess the impact of the recent European recession on stillbirth indices over the course of the 2000s and 2010s; the analysis focuses on four Southern European countries (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal), which were seriously affected by the sovereign debt crisis from around 2008 to 2017. We use national vital statistics and established economic indicators for the period 2000-2017; stillbirth ratios (stillbirths per 1000 livebirths) are the chosen response variable. For the purpose of the study, we employ correlation analysis and fit regression models. The overall impact of economic indicators on the stillbirth indices is sizeable and statistically robust. We find that a healthy economy is associated with low and declining levels of stillbirth measures. In contrast, economic recession appears to have an adverse effect (Greece, Italy and Spain), or an unclear impact (Portugal), on the stillbirth outcome. This study provides evidence of the adverse effect of the European sovereign debt crisis and ensuing period of austerity on a scarcely explored aspect of health.

Keywords: stillbirths; economic crisis; Southern Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2021-11-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in PLOS ONE, 18, November, 2021, 16(11). ISSN: 1932-6203

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/112692/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:112692

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().