The Effect of the Great Recession on Italian Life Expectancy

Giambattista Salinari (), Federico Benassi () and Gianni Carboni ()
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Giambattista Salinari: University of Sassari
Federico Benassi: University of Naples Federico II
Gianni Carboni: University of Sassari

Population Research and Policy Review, 2023, vol. 42, issue 1, No 7, 15 pages

Abstract: Abstract The 2008 economic crisis, also called the Great Recession, produced only a moderate rise in unemployment in Italy, but the consequences for public debt management were far more serious. Italy makes for a good case study for evaluating the effect on life expectancy at birth of the cost containment program in the health care system, implemented after the crisis began. To this end we employed the Artificial Control method using the data from the Human Mortality Database to assess the causal effect of the 2008 economic crisis on the subsequent evolution of life expectancy at birth (until 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic). Our analysis identifies a significant deceleration in the progression of Italian life expectancy. Ten years after the onset of the crisis, Italy appears to have lost almost 1 year of life expectancy with respect to what would have been expected had the crisis never happened.

Keywords: Life expectancy; Economic crisis; Italy; Artificial control; Health care expenditure; Causal inference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11113-023-09755-5

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