IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v313y2022ics0277953622007031.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is austerity a cause of slower improvements in mortality in high-income countries? A panel analysis

Author

Listed:
  • McCartney, Gerry
  • McMaster, Robert
  • Popham, Frank
  • Dundas, Ruth
  • Walsh, David

Abstract

The rate of improvement in mortality slowed across many high-income countries after 2010. Following the 2007–08 financial crisis, macroeconomic policy was dominated by austerity as countries attempted to address perceived problems of growing state debt and government budget deficits. This study estimates the impact of austerity on mortality trends for 37 high-income countries between 2000 and 2019.

Suggested Citation

  • McCartney, Gerry & McMaster, Robert & Popham, Frank & Dundas, Ruth & Walsh, David, 2022. "Is austerity a cause of slower improvements in mortality in high-income countries? A panel analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 313(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:313:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622007031
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115397
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953622007031
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115397?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richardson, Elizabeth & Fenton, Lynda & Parkinson, Jane & Pulford, Andrew & Taulbut, Martin & McCartney, Gerry & Robinson, Mark, 2020. "The effect of income-based policies on mortality inequalities in Scotland: a modelling study," EUROMOD Working Papers EM3/20, EUROMOD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    2. Toffolutti, Veronica & Suhrcke, Marc, 2019. "Does austerity really kill?," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 211-223.
    3. repec:osf:socarx:b2t4x_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. James Vaupel & Vladimir Romo, 2003. "Decomposing change in life expectancy: A bouquet of formulas in honor of Nathan Keyfitz’s 90th birthday," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 40(2), pages 201-216, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Melianova, Ekaterina & Morris, Tim T & Leckie, George & Manley, David, 2024. "Local government spending and mental health: Untangling the impacts using a dynamic modelling approach," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 348(C).
    2. Ye, Yiwan & Shu, Xiaoling, 2025. "Unequal but widespread despairs: Social inequalities and self-rated health trends in the United States in 1972–2018," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 367(C).
    3. Brook, Anna & Rendall, Georgia & Hearty, Wendy & Meier, Petra & Thomson, Hilary & Macnamara, Alexandra & Westborne, Rachel & Campbell, Mhairi & McCartney, Gerry, 2024. "What is the relationship between changes in the size of economies and mortality derived population health measures in high income countries: A causal systematic review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 357(C).
    4. McCartney, Gerry & Hill O'Connor, Clementine & Laughlin, Sue & Robertson, Tony & Bunse, Lukas & Crighton, Matthew & McLeod, Aileen & Cochrane, Phoebe & Stuart, Francis & Black, Iain & McMaster, Robert, 2025. "Evidence review to support the development of a Wellbeing Economy strategy in Scotland," Working Paper Series 01/2025, Post-Growth Economics Network (PEN).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Tomasz Wrycza & Annette Baudisch, 2012. "How life expectancy varies with perturbations in age-specific mortality," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 27(13), pages 365-376.
    2. Henrik Brønnum-Hansen & Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos Espiñeira & Camila Perera & Ingelise Andersen, 2023. "Trends in mortality patterns in two countries with different welfare models: comparisons between Cuba and Denmark 1955–2020," Journal of Population Research, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 1-28, June.
    3. Chiara Micheletti & Francisco Villavicencio, 2024. "On the relationship between life expectancy, modal age at death, and the threshold age of the life table entropy," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 51(24), pages 763-788.
    4. Nicholas Bloom & Charles I. Jones & John Van Reenen & Michael Webb, 2020. "Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(4), pages 1104-1144, April.
    5. Duncan Gillespie & Meredith Trotter & Shripad Tuljapurkar, 2014. "Divergence in Age Patterns of Mortality Change Drives International Divergence in Lifespan Inequality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(3), pages 1003-1017, June.
    6. Michael Væth & Henrik Støvring & Mette Vinther Skriver, 2018. "The impact of proportional changes in age-specific mortality on life expectancy when the mortality rate is a log-linear function of age," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 39(23), pages 671-684.
    7. Edwards, Ryan, 2008. "Widening health inequalities among U.S. military retirees since 1974," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(11), pages 1657-1668, December.
    8. Ahbab Mohammad Fazle Rabbi & Stefano Mazzuco, 2021. "Mortality Forecasting with the Lee–Carter Method: Adjusting for Smoothing and Lifespan Disparity," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 37(1), pages 97-120, March.
    9. Guccio, C. & Pignataro, G. & Vidoli, F., 2024. "It never rains but it pours: Austerity and mortality rate in peripheral areas," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    10. Roland Rau & Gabriele Doblhammer & Vladimir Canudas-Romo & Zhang Zhen, 2008. "Cause-of-Death Contributions to Educational Inequalities in Mortality in Austria between 1981/1982 and 1991/1992," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 24(3), pages 265-286, September.
    11. Beltrán-Sánchez, Hiram & Soneji, Samir, 2011. "A unifying framework for assessing changes in life expectancy associated with changes in mortality: The case of violent deaths," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 38-48.
    12. José M. Aburto & Alyson A. van Raalte, 2017. "Lifespan dispersion in times of life expectancy fluctuation: the case of Central and Eastern Europe," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2017-018, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    13. Fuhmei Wang & Jung-Der Wang, 2021. "The Determinants of Telehealth Provision: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-13, August.
    14. repec:osf:socarx:xb6vq_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. repec:plo:pmed00:1001050 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Aburto, José Manuel & Kristensen, Frederikke Frehr & Sharp, Paul, 2021. "Black-white disparities during an epidemic: Life expectancy and lifespan disparity in the US, 1980–2000," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    17. Aburto, José Manuel & Basellini, Ugofilippo & Baudisch, Annette & Villavicencio, Francisco, 2022. "Drewnowski’s index to measure lifespan variation: Revisiting the Gini coefficient of the life table," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 1-10.
    18. Balbo, Nicoletta & Carapella, Piergiorgio & Toffolutti, Veronica, 2020. "Trends in the use of mind-altering drugs among European adolescents during the Great Recession," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(5), pages 568-574.
    19. McHugh, Neil & Bomark, David & Baker, Rachel & Watson, Verity & Craig, Neil & Donaldson, Cam, 2025. "Trading-off outcomes and policy characteristics of a Universal Basic Income and a Minimum Income Guarantee: Evidence from an exploratory mixed-method preference-based study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 370(C).
    20. Glenn Firebaugh & Claudia Nau & Francesco Acciai & Christopher J Prather & Aggie Noah, 2014. "Why the racial gap in life expectancy is declining in the United States," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 31(32), pages 975-1006.
    21. Basellini, Ugofilippo & Camarda, Carlo Giovanni & Booth, Heather, 2023. "Thirty years on: A review of the Lee–Carter method for forecasting mortality," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1033-1049.
    22. Per Kragh Andersen & Vladimir Canudas-Romo & Niels Keiding, 2013. "Cause-specific measures of life years lost," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 29(41), pages 1127-1152.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:313:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622007031. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.