The Great Recession and Health

Sarah A. Burgard, Jennifer A. Ailshire and Lucie Kalousova

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2013, vol. 650, issue 1, 194-213

Abstract: Two research traditions have evolved to assess links between recessions and health, with seemingly divergent findings. Aggregate-level studies generally find that mortality rates decline during recessionary periods. By contrast, individual-level studies generally find that events that frequently occur during recessions, like job loss, unemployment, and material hardship, carry negative health consequences. We comprehensively review evidence from these two bodies of research, illustrate key findings, and show how the different mechanisms can operate in parallel. We also outline some of the limitations of the extant evidence, discuss studies emerging to address these limits and directions for future research, and provide brief empirical examples to illustrate some of these limits and directions using the Health and Retirement Study and the Michigan Recession and Recovery Study. Our review emphasizes the importance of considering both the aggregate- and individual-level associations when evaluating the likely short- and longer-term consequences of the Great Recession for health and health disparities.

Keywords: Great Recession; unemployment; health; mortality; morbidity; material hardship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716213500212 (text/html)

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:sae:anname:v:650:y:2013:i:1:p:194-213

DOI: 10.1177/0002716213500212

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().