A weak labor market, like the one we’ve experienced since the 2008 financial crisis, imposes enormous stress on people. Given the added anxiety created by a weak economy, you might think life expectancy would decline. Oddly, though, during recessions, exactly the opposite tends to happen:
Life expectancy rises.
The age-adjusted U.S. death rate declined by 2 percent from 2007 to 2010, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a result, projected life expectancy at birth rose to 78.7 years in 2010 from 77.9 years in 2007, an increase of 0.8 years. In contrast, from 2004 to 2007, when the economy was much stronger, life expectancy rose by only 0.4 years.
Life expectancy appears to have risen more in the states with relatively large increases in unemployment. In Michigan and Illinois, where joblessness rose much more than in North Dakota or Iowa, age-adjusted death rates have had a steeper decline since 2007.
These cross-state data are consistent with historical patterns that economists Douglas Miller, Marianne Page, Ann Stevens and Mateusz Filipski have found. Their research shows that a 1 percentage point increase in a state’s unemployment rate is associated with a 0.5 percent reduction in the state’s mortality rate.
Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of Virginia, determined that while suicide rates rise during downturns, other types of fatalities, such as from motor-vehicle accidents, fall more. The surprising findings apply even to heart attacks. Ruhm finds that higher unemployment reduces deaths from heart attacks, perhaps because when there is less economic activity, hazards such as air pollution and traffic congestion are less severe. Smoking and obesity also tend to decline.
What can we make of all this? That life expectancy seems to go up rather than down during recessions is little comfort to those suffering through a weak labor market. Despite the increase in life expectancy from a recession, therefore, the best policy approach remains an aggressive support for the economy now, coupled with lots of deficit reduction enacted today but implemented later on.
Peter Orszag is vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup. He wrote this for Bloomberg News.
