How a recession extend lives

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

safety-lane.com 07105
chiropractic-lane.com
www.shopcbd-lane
NEWARK
http://www.healthy-lane.com

How a recession extend lives

For those of you with no patience (the TL/DR model) the answer is that a recession decreases POLLUTION and your expose to it.  That decrease in exposure increases lifespans.

For those with more patience, please read on:

The Great Recession of 2008 had a lot of downsides: People lost homes, jobs, and retirement savings, had their careers derailed, and were forced to learn what the heck synthetic collateralized debt obligations are. But according to recent research, it also made people in the US live longer.

A working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research by economists from MIT, the University of Chicago, and McMaster University estimates:

  • The age-adjusted mortality rate for Americans dropped by 0.5% for every 1 percentage point rise of the unemployment rate in their area from 2007 to 2009. Based on the change to the national unemployment rate, that suggests the annual mortality rate got 2.3% smaller overall.
  • This means “the Great Recession provided one in twenty-five 55-year-olds with an extra year of life.”
  • The dip in mortality rates cuts across gender, race, and ethnicity, but it was biggest for people 25+ whose education ended with a high school diploma and for people over 65, who tend to have higher death rates.

The researchers, a team led by MIT’s Amy Finkelstein, found that this impact on the mortality rate was immediate and lasted at least ten years.

If that surprises you, you’re in good company: Despite some previous research linking recessions with longevity, 50% of a group of 300 experts surveyed by the researchers said they expected that the economic downturn would have caused an increase in the mortality rate. But the research team’s review of county-level health and economic data for all 50 states and Washington, DC, from 2003 to 2016 suggested otherwise.


Why is a bad economy good for your lifespan?

To find out why economic devastation kept people ticking, the researchers first ruled out some options. They found:

  • It wasn’t healthier habits: Unemployed individuals weren’t using their extra free time to exercise more or cutting down on smoking or drinking to save cash.
  • Germs still spread: Even though people were congregating less in offices and restaurants, infectious illnesses like the flu still found them.
  • Older people weren’t getting better care: While older people benefited more than younger ones, it wasn’t because nursing homes were able to staff up.

So, how did the recession extend people’s lifetimes? Mostly by decreasing air pollution, according to the paper.

As we saw in 2020, air quality goes up when people stop driving to work, offices use less power, and factories slow down output—all things that also happen in a recession. And the researchers determined that the counties with the most job losses also saw the biggest boost to the cleanliness of their air, as shown by the level of tiny pollution particles known as PM2.5.

Plus, the kinds of deaths associated with air pollution went way down, including deaths from heart disease, which declined so much that it accounted for about half of the lowered mortality rate. Meanwhile, the extra benefits to people without higher education degrees are consistent with evidence that less educated people are often exposed to greater pollution.

How worried should you be about breathing in this economy? We don’t recommend stopping, but you might have reason to be a little concerned. Only seven countries currently meet the World Health Organization’s air quality standard guidelines for PM2.5—and the US isn’t one of them, according to a report published by IQAir this week.

Where does that leave us?

If we want the same life-preserving benefits without the economic devastation, “pollution is probably underregulated,” Matthew Notowidigdo, one of the authors of the study on the Great Recession, told the Chicago Booth Review. And Zoë Schlanger, a staff writer at The Atlantic, argues the study highlights the imperative for transitioning away from fossil fuels quickly.

via Blogger https://bit.ly/3TzEAe0