Exercise, physical activity, and exertion over the business cycle
Gregory Colman () and
Dhaval Dave
Social Science & Medicine, 2013, vol. 93, issue C, 11-20
Abstract:
Shifts in time and income constraints over economic expansions and contractions would be expected to affect individuals' behaviors. We explore the impact of the business cycle on individuals' exercise, time use, and total physical exertion, utilizing information on 112,000 individual records from the 2003–2010 American Time Use Surveys. In doing so, we test a key causal link that has been hypothesized in the relation between unemployment and health, but not heretofore assessed. Using more precise measures of exercise (and other activities) than previous studies, we find that as work-time decreases during a recession, recreational exercise, TV-watching, sleeping, childcare, and housework increase. This, however, does not compensate for the decrease in work-related exertion due to job-loss, and total physical exertion declines. These effects are strongest among low-educated men, which is validating given that employment in the Great Recession has declined most within manufacturing, mining, and construction. We also find evidence of intra-household spillover effects, wherein individuals respond to shifts in spousal employment conditional on their own labor supply. The decrease in total physical activity during recessions is especially problematic for vulnerable populations concentrated in boom-and-bust industries, and may have longer-term effects on obesity and related health outcomes.
Keywords: USA; Unemployment; Recession; Exercise; Time use; Physical activity; Employment; Health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (63)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953613003262
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
Working Paper: Exercise, Physical Activity, and Exertion over the Business Cycle (2011) 
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:eee:socmed:v:93:y:2013:i:c:p:11-20
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.05.032
Access Statistics for this article
Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian
More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().