A note on the impact of hours worked on mortality in OECD countries

摘要

Recent research has put into new light the impact that economic downturn has on individuals' health [1,2,3,4]. An analysis of United States data for the years 1972-1991, for example, revealed that a one percentage point rise in unemployment led to a 0.5-0.6% reduction in overall mortality, including a decline in deaths from heart disease by 0.5%, those from influenza/pneumonia by 0.7%, and those from vehicle accidents by 3% [1], Similarly, a study of 23 OECD countries over the period 1960-1997 found that a one percentage point rise in unemployment was associated with 0.4% lower overall mortality and a reduction in the number of deaths from heart disease by 0.4%, those from influenza/pneumonia by 1.1%, and those from motor vehicle accidents by 1.8% [3]. These studies have in common that instead of using a pure time series analyses, which was the case in many earlier studies (e.g., [5,6,7]), they employ fixed effects models. In these models the within-state or within -region variation in the unemployment rate is used together with other control variables to explain the within-state or with-in-region variation in various measures of health, such as mortality rates. As can be guessed, the major problem with earlier time series analyses is that they did not properly control for confounding factors, and that a positive relationship between the unemployment rate and mortality may be spurious.