IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v60y2005i1p205-218.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Business cycles and mortality: results from Swedish microdata

Author

Listed:
  • Gerdtham, Ulf-G.
  • Johannesson, Magnus

Abstract

We assess the relationship between business cycles and mortality risk using a large individual level data set on over 40,000 individuals in Sweden who were followed for 10-16 years (leading to over 500,000 person-year observations). We test the effect of six alternative business cycle indicators on the mortality risk: the unemployment rate, the notification rate, the deviation from the GDP trend, the GDP change, the industry capacity utilization, and the industry confidence indicator. For men we find a significant countercyclical relationship between the business cycle and the mortality risk for four of the indicators and a non-significant effect for the other two indicators. For women we cannot reject the null hypothesis of no effect for any of the business cycle indicators.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Johannesson, Magnus, 2005. "Business cycles and mortality: results from Swedish microdata," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 205-218, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:60:y:2005:i:1:p:205-218
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(04)00228-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ulf-G. Gerdtham & Magnus Johannesson, 2004. "Absolute Income, Relative Income, Income Inequality, and Mortality," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(1).
    2. Clark, Andrew E & Oswald, Andrew J, 1994. "Unhappiness and Unemployment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(424), pages 648-659, May.
    3. George A. Akerlof & Rachel E. Kranton, 2000. "Economics and Identity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 115(3), pages 715-753.
    4. Kydland, Finn E & Prescott, Edward C, 1982. "Time to Build and Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1345-1370, November.
    5. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Ruhm, Christopher J., 2006. "Deaths rise in good economic times: Evidence from the OECD," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 298-316, December.
    6. W. Kip Viscusi, 1994. "Mortality Effects of Regulatory Costs and Policy Evaluation Criteria," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(1), pages 94-109, Spring.
    7. Christopher J. Ruhm, 2000. "Are Recessions Good for Your Health?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 115(2), pages 617-650.
    8. Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-255, March-Apr.
    9. Theodossiou, I., 1998. "The effects of low-pay and unemployment on psychological well-being: A logistic regression approach," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 85-104, January.
    10. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "The Relation between Price and Marginal Cost in U.S. Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(5), pages 921-947, October.
    11. Guilkey, David K. & Murphy, James L., 1993. "Estimation and testing in the random effects probit model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 301-317, October.
    12. Lutter, Randall & Morrall, John F, III & Viscusi, W Kip, 1999. "The Cost-per-Life-Saved Cutoff for Safety-Enhancing Regulations," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 37(4), pages 599-608, October.
    13. Viscusi, W Kip, 1994. "Risk-Risk Analysis," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 8(1), pages 5-17, January.
    14. Ruhm, Christopher J., 2003. "Good times make you sick," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 637-658, July.
    15. Hamermesh, Daniel S & Soss, Neal M, 1974. "An Economic Theory of Suicide," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 83-98, Jan.-Feb..
    16. Liliana Winkelmann & Rainer Winkelmann, 1998. "Why Are the Unemployed So Unhappy?Evidence from Panel Data," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 65(257), pages 1-15, February.
    17. Colby Jr, John P. & Linsky, Arnold S. & Straus, Murray A., 1994. "Social stress and state-to-state differences in smoking and smoking related mortality in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 373-381, January.
    18. King, Robert G. & Rebelo, Sergio T., 1993. "Low frequency filtering and real business cycles," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 17(1-2), pages 207-231.
    19. Gerdtham, Ulf-G & Johannesson, Magnus, 2002. "Do Life-Saving Regulations Save Lives?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 231-249, May.
    20. Jahn, Ingeborg & Becker, Ute & Jöckel, Karl-Heinz & Pohlabeln, Hermann, 1995. "Occupational life course and lung cancer risk in men. Findings from a socio-epidemiological analysis of job-changing histories in a case-control study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 40(7), pages 961-975, April.
    21. Neumayer, Eric, 2004. "Recessions lower (some) mortality rates:: evidence from Germany," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 1037-1047, March.
    22. Junankar, P N, 1991. "Unemployment and Mortality in England and Wales: A Preliminary Analysis," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 43(2), pages 305-320, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Kuhn, Andreas & Lalive, Rafael & Zweimüller, Josef, 2009. "The public health costs of job loss," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1099-1115, December.
    2. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Johannesson, Magnus, 2003. "A note on the effect of unemployment on mortality," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 505-518, May.
    3. Gerdtham, Ulf-G. & Ruhm, Christopher J., 2006. "Deaths rise in good economic times: Evidence from the OECD," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 298-316, December.
    4. Christopher J. Ruhm, 2006. "Macroeconomic Conditions, Health and Mortality," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Bassanini, Andrea & Caroli, Eve, 2014. "Is work bad for health? The role of constraint vs choice," CEPREMAP Working Papers (Docweb) 1402, CEPREMAP.
    6. repec:dau:papers:123456789/12483 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Wang, Huixia & Wang, Chenggang & Halliday, Timothy J., 2018. "Health and health inequality during the great recession: Evidence from the PSID," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 17-30.
    8. Clémentine Garrouste & Mathilde Godard, 2016. "The lasting health impact of leaving school in a bad economy : Britons in the 1970s recession," Post-Print hal-01408637, HAL.
    9. Max Brüning & Josselin Thuilliez, 2019. "Mortality and Macroeconomic Conditions: What Can We Learn From France?," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(5), pages 1747-1764, October.
    10. Andreas KUHN & Rafael LALIVE & Josef ZWEIMÜLLER, 2007. "The Public Health Costs of Unemployment," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 07.08, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    11. Svensson, Mikael, 2007. "Do not go breaking your heart: Do economic upturns really increase heart attack mortality?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(4), pages 833-841, August.
    12. Edvard Johansson, 2004. "A note on the impact of hours worked on mortality in OECD countries," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 5(4), pages 335-340, November.
    13. Christopher Ruhm, 2007. "A healthy economy can break your heart," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 44(4), pages 829-848, November.
    14. Ruhm, Christopher J., 2015. "Recessions, healthy no more?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 17-28.
    15. Ruhm, Christopher J., 2005. "Healthy living in hard times," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 341-363, March.
    16. Clementine Garrouste & Mathilde Godard, 2016. "The Lasting Health Impact of Leaving School in a Bad Economy: Britons in the 1970s Recession," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(S2), pages 70-92, November.
    17. Xin Xu & Robert Kaestner, 2010. "The Business Cycle and Health Behaviors," NBER Working Papers 15737, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Tapia Granados, José A., 2012. "Economic growth and health progress in England and Wales: 160 years of a changing relation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 74(5), pages 688-695.
    19. Thorhildur Ólafsdóttir & Birgir Hrafnkelsson & Tinna Ásgeirsdóttir, 2015. "The Icelandic economic collapse, smoking, and the role of labor-market changes," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 16(4), pages 391-405, May.
    20. Clifford Afoakwah & Son Nghiem & Paul Scuffham & Joshua Byrnes, 2021. "Rising unemployment reduces the demand for healthcare services among people with cardiovascular disease: an Australian cohort study," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 22(4), pages 643-658, June.
    21. repec:dau:papers:123456789/14542 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Jean‐Paul Lam & Emmanuelle Piérard, 2017. "The Time‐Varying Relationship between Mortality and Business Cycles in the USA," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(2), pages 164-183, February.

    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:60:y:2005:i:1:p:205-218. 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.