Does austerity really kill?

Veronica Toffolutti and Marc Suhrcke

No b2t4x, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: A growing body of the literature has argued that austerity has been bad for health, though without directly measuring austerity. This paper explicitly distinguishes the association of mortality with macroeconomic fluctuations from that with fiscal policy measures, using data for 28 European Union (EU) countries covering the period 1991-2013. The main results present a nuanced, complex picture about the mortality impact of fiscal policies. We confirm the mortality decreasing (increasing) effect of recessions (booms), with the exception of suicide mortality, which shows the opposite effects. Austerity regimes are associated with an increase in all-cause mortality (0.7%). At the same time, fiscal stimuli tend to significantly increase death rates due to cirrhosis or chronic liver disease (3%) and those due to vehicle accidents (4.3%). Overall, the results appear to be sensitive to the set of countries included: when excluding the Baltics, Romania and Hungary, austerity policies turn out to significantly increase suicide-related mortality (2.8%), while the effect on all-cause mortality remains the same (0.7%).

Date: 2019-03-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-mac
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Journal Article: Does austerity really kill? (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:b2t4x

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/b2t4x

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