The Great Recession and Health

Author(s):  
Sarah A. Burgard ◽  
Jennifer A. Ailshire ◽  
Lucie Kalousova

Two research traditions have evolved to assess links between recessions and health, with seemingly divergent findings. Aggregate-level studies generally find that mortality rates decline during recessionary periods. By contrast, individual-level studies generally find that events that frequently occur during recessions, like job loss, unemployment, and material hardship, carry negative health consequences. We comprehensively review evidence from these two bodies of research, illustrate key findings, and show how the different mechanisms can operate in parallel. We also outline some of the limitations of the extant evidence, discuss studies emerging to address these limits and directions for future research, and provide brief empirical examples to illustrate some of these limits and directions using the Health and Retirement Study and the Michigan Recession and Recovery Study. Our review emphasizes the importance of considering both the aggregate- and individual-level associations when evaluating the likely short- and longer-term consequences of the Great Recession for health and health disparities.

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Gradín ◽  
Olga Cantó ◽  
Coral del Río

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the different dynamic characteristics of unemployment in a selected group of European Union countries during the current Great Recession, which had unequal consequences on employment depending on the country considered. Design/methodology/approach – The paper follows Shorrocks’s proposal of a duration-sensitive measure of unemployment, and uses cross-sectional data reported by Eurostat coming from European Labour Force Surveys. Findings – The results add some evidence on the relevance of incorporating spells’ duration in measuring unemployment, finding remarkable differences in unemployment patterns in time among European countries. Research limitations/implications – In this paper unemployment is analyzed for all the labor force. Future research should investigate patterns across specific groups such as young people, women, immigrants or the low skilled. Practical implications – It is generally accepted that the negative impact of unemployment on individual welfare can be very different depending on its duration. However, conventional statistics on unemployment do not adequately capture to what extent the recession is not only increasing the incidence of unemployment but also its severity in terms of duration in time of ongoing unemployment spells. The paper shows an easy and practical way to do it in order to improve the understanding of the unemployment phenomenon, using information usually reported by statistical offices. Originality/value – First, the paper provides a tool for dynamic analysis of unemployment based on reported cross-sectional data. Second, the paper demonstrates the empirical relevance of considering spells’ duration when assessing differences in unemployment across countries or in unemployment trends. This is usually neglected or only partially addressed by most conventional measures of unemployment.


2020 ◽  
pp. 32-62
Author(s):  
Timothy Hellwig ◽  
Yesola Kweon ◽  
Jack Vowles

This chapter reviews the political and economic context of the global financial crisis (GFC). We first examine the origins and immediate effects of the GFC and the ‘Great Recession’ that it spawned. Ranging beyond the European focus of the research so far, we examine the impact of the crisis across the member countries of the OECD and the ways in which that variation is shaping the contexts of individual-level behaviour. We then examine patterns of electoral volatility and the changing nature of party systems before turning to consider the reasons why some governments were defeated and why others survived. Across these outcomes, analyses show that the impact of economic factors on political outcomes varied depending on their timing: before, during, or after the GFC. The chapter concludes by introducing our main sources of data: cross-sectional individual-level survey data from twenty-five national elections in OECD democracies from 2011 to 2016 sourced from Module 4 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES); macro-data for thirty-five OECD democracies from 1990 to 2016; and a pooled set of 113 post-election surveys from twenty-four OECD countries between 1996 and 2017.


2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-397
Author(s):  
Markus H Schafer ◽  
Jason Settels ◽  
Laura Upenieks

Abstract The private home is a crucial site in the aging process, yet the upkeep of this physical space often poses a challenge for community-dwelling older adults. Previous efforts to explain variation in disorderly household conditions have relied on individual-level characteristics, but ecological perspectives propose that home environments are inescapably nested within the dynamic socioeconomic circumstances of surrounding spatial contexts, such as the metro area. We address this ecological embeddedness in the context of the Great Recession, an event in which some U.S. cities saw pronounced and persistent declines across multiple economic indicators while other areas rebounded more rapidly. Panel data (2005–6 and 2010–11) from a national survey of older adults were linked to interviewer home evaluations and city-level economic data. Results from fixed-effects regression support the hypothesis that older adults dwelling in struggling cities experienced an uptick in disorderly household conditions. Findings emphasize the importance of city-specificity when probing effects of a downturn. Observing changes in home upkeep also underscores the myriad ways in which a city’s most vulnerable residents— older adults, in particular—are affected by its economic fortunes.


Author(s):  
Rachel E. Dunifon ◽  
Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest ◽  
Kimberly Kopko

U.S. children today have increasingly diverse living arrangements. In 2012, 10 percent of children lived with at least one grandparent; 8 percent lived in three-generational households, consisting of a parent and a grandparent; while 2 percent lived with a grandparent and no parent in the household. This article reviews the literature on grandparent coresidence and presents new research on children coresiding with grandparents in modern families. Findings suggest that grandparent coresidence is quite common and that its prevalence increased during the Great Recession. Additionally, these living arrangements are diverse themselves, varying by the marital status of the parent, the home in which the family lives, and the economic well-being of the family. Suggestions for future research are also proposed.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Núñez

This article concerns itself with financial traders in Spain who have been diagnosed with gambling disorder. It analyzes what I call the clinical economy of speculation, in which the category of problem gambler is repurposed to draw new lines around proper financial trading. In exploring the expansion of post–financial crisis regulatory mechanisms for credit and debt, as well as widening inequalities across the field of investment, I depict how both traders and clinicians become invested in medicalizing trading as gambling disorder. My theorizing interrogates whether and why common speculative practices are seen as sick and unsafe when everyday people, instead of banks and other financial institutions, perform them. I argue that the pathologized trader is an attempt to regulate, at the individual level, the increasing use of borrowed capital to make financial profits. The commodification of debt, however, is not a gender-neutral development. Female traders pay a greater price for venturing into the heights of finance. This focus on gender brings into view the redefinition of credit and debt within the domain of trading, and shows the role of debt-fueled financial speculation in the expansion of financial markets. These ethnographic findings are particularly relevant in a country like Spain, where the Great Recession has bred more new millionaires than ever before, even as the smaller fish of the economy are being medicalized and sometimes even incarcerated.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Du ◽  
Takeshi Yagihashi

Abstract We study how macroeconomic conditions during the Great Recession affected health care utilization and out-of-pocket expenditures of American households. We use two data sources: the Consumer Expenditure (CE) Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP); each has its own advantages. The CE contains quarterly frequency variables, and the SIPP provides panel data at the individual level. Consistent evidence across the two datasets shows that utilization of routine medical care was counter-cyclical, whereas hospital care was pro-cyclical during the Great Recession. When we examine the pre-recession period, the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and health care use was either non-existent or in opposite directions, suggesting that this relationship may have been unique to the Great Recession.


Societies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joonghyun Kwak ◽  
Michael Wallace

In an increasingly globalized world, anti-immigrant sentiment has become more prevalent. Competitive threat theory suggests that anti-immigrant attitudes increase when adverse economic circumstances intensify competition with immigrants for scarce resources, but past studies using this approach are inconclusive. In this study, we investigate the impact of the Great Recession on perceived immigrant threat—an index of seven items measuring attitudes toward immigrants—using the 2013 International Social Survey Program survey. Using multilevel models, we analyze responses from 18,433 respondents nested within 22 countries. We create a country-level measure of the Great Recession Index comprised of four dimensions—the housing crash, the financial crisis, economic decline, and employment loss—and assess its impact on perceived immigrant threat. After controlling for a variety of individual-level and country-level covariates, we find that the Great Recession is positively associated with perceived immigrant threat. We also identify important interaction effects between the Great Recession Index and change in government expenditures, age, educational levels, citizenship, and urbanization. The study contributes to competitive threat theory by showing the effect of the Great Recession in exacerbating anti-immigrant sentiment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 13713
Author(s):  
Xuesong Gao ◽  
Hui Wang ◽  
Lun Liu

People’s movement trace harvested from mobile phone signals has become an important new data source for studying human behavior and related socioeconomic topics in social science. With growing concern about privacy leakage of big data, mobile phone data holders now tend to provide aggregate-level mobility data instead of individual-level data. However, most algorithms for measuring mobility are based on individual-level data—how the existing mobility algorithms can be properly transformed to apply on aggregate-level data remains undiscussed. This paper explores the transformation of individual data-based mobility metrics to fit with grid-aggregate data. Fifteen candidate metrics measuring five indicators of mobility are proposed and the most suitable one for each indicator is selected. Future research about aggregate-level mobility data may refer to our analysis to assist in the selection of suitable mobility metrics.


Author(s):  
Mariano Torcal ◽  
Pablo Christmann

This chapter discusses the reason for the outstanding decline political trust and satisfaction with democracy (SWD) in Spain since 2008. It analyses the evolution of political attitudes between 1985 and 2018, and contrasts these with political and economic performances in Spain. It then situates the recent developments within the rest of Europe, showing that the decline in political trust and SWD has been especially pronounced in Spain, even when contrasted with other Southern European countries or Eastern Europe. Finally, we analyse an individual-level panel dataset (CIUPANEL) to put existing explanations of the recent decline to a multivariate test. We present empirical evidence which confirms that despite the initial importance of the Great Recession, evaluations of the system’s political responsiveness and political corruption are equally relevant when accounting for changes in political trust and SWD in Spain over time. We find indications that poor political performance is the main reason why political trust has remained so low, despite the economic recovery in the country.


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