Lives vs. Livelihoods: The Impact of the Great Recession on Mortality and Welfare (nber.org) 70
Academics have found that the U.S. mortality declines during recessions, with "reductions in air pollution... a quantitatively important mechanism." Abstract of a paper on National Bureau of Economic Research: We leverage spatial variation in the severity of the Great Recession across the United States to examine its impact on mortality and to explore implications for the welfare consequences of recessions. We estimate that an increase in the unemployment rate of the magnitude of the Great Recession reduces the average, annual age-adjusted mortality rate by 2.3 percent, with effects persisting for at least 10 years. Mortality reductions appear across causes of death and are concentrated in the half of the population with a high school degree or less. We estimate similar percentage reductions in mortality at all ages, with declines in elderly mortality thus responsible for about three-quarters of the total mortality reduction. Recession-induced mortality declines are driven primarily by external effects of reduced aggregate economic activity on mortality, and recession-induced reductions in air pollution appear to be a quantitatively important mechanism. Incorporating our estimates of pro-cyclical mortality into a standard macroeconomics framework substantially reduces the welfare costs of recessions, particularly for people with less education, and at older ages where they may even be welfare-improving.
bogus (Score:4)
I believe their statistics on mortality. I don't believe their claims about the reasons, other than it might have something to do with recession.
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Your "belief" is irrelevant.
The science is what matters.
Re:bogus (Score:5, Insightful)
There's the data collected and the correlations identified, which are straightforward enough.
Then there's the hypothesis about why the correlation, which is subject to reasonable debate, particularly here.
For example, they note a particular effect for people with lower education. Pollution does not care what degree you have. I also would expect pollution in the general sense to be a bit longer term and "fuzzy" so as to not make a nice little correlation. However, that stratum of the population is more likely to have to resort to dangerous work, or working with hazardous material without adequate PPE.
Also, they are studying all of mortality across society. So they can't help but to also be affected by changes in medicine.
Essentially, the field is wide open to explain why mortality rates decreased across society over a decade, and to blindly accept their hypothesis is not the only thing that matters in science.
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Do you have anything beyond your "belief"?
Do you have any data that supports your belief?
The authors have 135 pages of data and analysis. What do you have in your basement?
Re:bogus (Score:5, Insightful)
My point is that all the data and analysis can do is show the facts and correlations, but the debate of 'why' is open.
Particulate air pollution went down between 2008-2016. They posit that it's because the recession drove it. However, we also had a different presidential administration, a different EPA behavior. Also during a time where natural gas was *super* cheap and migration away from coal made just a lot of sense. Also, while it did go down over that time period, it went particularly down in 2009 or so, a couple of years after the recession kicked in. It declined more in the economic recovery than it did during the economic failing.
If correlating that further to lung related health, we *also* saw a continuing trend of tobacco smoking becoming less and less popular, which further could contribute to lung related health.
If you can identify lung health problems correlated to only economic activity and can somehow magically rule out all other correlations, you still have low income people doing jobs with all sorts of particulates and inadequate, improperly worn, or no PPE. So it's going to be a challenge to try to delineate clean air broadly versus occupational hazards.
These are merely examples of alternate hypotheses that can be found in the same data. The point is these broad meta-analysis papers have limits, and sometimes the authors, sometimes the media overextend what is reasonably possible to believe to be "settled science".
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Mark Twain
Re:bogus (Score:5, Interesting)
From March of 202 through March of 2021 economic activity was severely reduced. We know this for the obvious reason and for the fact rivers [frontiersin.org], streams, and other bodies of water were suddenly not as polluted, the air [nasa.gov] was cleaner [nih.gov], and so on.
With reduction in air pollution due to lessened economic activity, lung health would have improved (temporarily) during that time. Further, by wearing masks during covid, low income people who did work at jobs with particulates should be shown to have lesser lung issues during that time than before or now.
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If you can identify lung health problems correlated to only economic activity and can somehow magically rule out all other correlations
There's nothing magic about it. Cross correlations are used to rule out different sources affecting the hypothesis. E.g. for your smoking example, we have enough data over enough years to know the effect cigarette sales have on lung health which can be corrected for when looking at other aspects of lung health over the same period.
It seems like a lot of Slashdot's understanding of correlation stops with grade 10 science where they think that all studies explore single variable correlations. There's a reason
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TFA
Recession-induced mortality declines are driven primarily by external effects of reduced aggregate economic activity on mortality, and recession-induced reductions in air pollution appear to be a quantitatively important mechanism.
The authors mathematically correlate the recession with a reduction in mortality, this is non-controversial (that is if we agree that the mortality statistics are valid). What happens next is where I agree with Junta - this conclusion is some pretty broad hand waiving speculation that is certainly persuasive, but not actually justified as a proven fact:
(1) from Page5 of the article, the source data is CDC (for young people and all cause mortality) and Medicare data (for retiree mortality), Bureau of Lab
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Note the wording,
and recession-induced reductions in air pollution appear to be a quantitatively important mechanism.
Emphasis added.
Appear to be, not a fact but a conjecture. Usually in studies a statement like that means more research needed.
Poorer people do tend to live in more polluted environments, so it does appear to be a good area for further study.
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Poorer people do tend to live in more polluted environments, so it does appear to be a good area for further study.
This was my first thought as well. I saw a special on "cancer alleys" a couple weeks ago. Basically, minority communities located directly downwind and stream from polluting industry.
Re:bogus (Score:5, Informative)
For example, they note a particular effect for people with lower education. Pollution does not care what degree you have.
Less-educated people are more likely to be living in areas of high concentrations of air pollution without benefit of air filters and climate control. They're also more likely to be living on the street or employed in outdoor jobs where, again, they're exposed to more air pollution.
And they may be working in jobs where their exposure to substances not-good-for-health is higher, and air pollution compounding that may push them across a threshold. Not to mention poorer healthcare leading to untreated conditions which, again, could be exacerbated by air pollution.
If these factors seem pretty obvious to someone like me with no expertise in the field, there are undoubtedly more that I have missed, and they may have an even greater effect on mortality.
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Note that unemployment is correlated with *worse* healthcare, particularly among low income people. So a difficult macroeconomic situation might be expected to worsen health outcomes.
But in general, I intended it more as example of alternative hypothesis. That the data may be interesting, but specific hypotheses are a bit less realistic, given the impossibly wide scope of variables going into the data. You have no control groups, you have no ability to prevent an unmanageable amount of inputs from influen
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You seem to be assuming, from your statements you posted, that you think the vast majority of those out there without college educations are bums on the street?
You do know we have a very large blue collar working part of socie
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You seem to be assuming, from your statements you posted, that you think the vast majority of those out there without college educations are bums on the street?
Why would you think he thinks that? Are you incapable of reading a post without making an absurd dishonest reply? Do you not understand what the word "or" means, or the idea of separate subjects in separate sentences?
You are literally arguing only with your own illiteracy.
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Re: bogus (Score:2)
"Plumbers? Electricians? Working on the auto manufacturing lines...UAW, etc....."
You just named three kinds of people who are exposed to more pollutants while working than average, and you somehow think that's evidence of the opposite?
Pollution does care what degree you have (Score:3)
For example, they note a particular effect for people with lower education. Pollution does not care what degree you have.
Studies dating back to 1600 England have shown that poor people live in more polluted areas than rich. Rich people lived in areas with better air flow when people heated with wood then they lived up wind from smoke stacks when the factories became the dominant source of city pollution. Now the rich live in the suburbs or at least away from major highways. The rich are better educated than the poor so yes, having a degree likely does mean you live in a less polluted area.
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Working from home saves lives!
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Depends on the home. Trying to work from home in a shitty single bedroom apartment with a wife and 4 kids may well result in murder.
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Pollution does not care what degree you have.
It does care where you live, and how well-filtered the air in your home and workspace is, though.
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I have an alternate hypothesis - Great Recession threw a lot of people out of work. Proportionately more with lower education levels. They could no longer afford as much cigarettes, booze, and/or drugs as before. So consumed less of them. And lived longer.
How's that one?
Re: bogus (Score:2)
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You need some evidence for your belief.
Belief without evidence is religion.
Re: bogus (Score:2)
Re:bogus (Score:4, Interesting)
Your "belief" is irrelevant. The science is what matters.
Having read the paper, it reads distinctly as if it were AI generated, or at the very least, a whole lot of buzzwords thrown about, which serve the purpose of obfuscating the material. I've written and read papers, and this one is trying way too hard. Which indeed sends up many red flags all by itself. I'd reject it and send it back for rewrite. There is no need for that level of word salad.
Indeed, to validate their premise, it is quite simple - Since they consider an undeniable fact that the so called Great Recession is a proximate cause of a decrease in life expectancy of people without post secondary education - there will be a corresponding decrease in life expectancy in all countries in the world, and what is more - will track exactly the depth of said great depression. Some countries were affected more than others, and it will be even more trackable in recessions not of USA origins.
Do you have the science cites for that?
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Your "belief" is irrelevant.
The science is what matters.
Every other major study on this subject has drawn the exact opposite conclusion: the higher the unemployment rate, the higher the mortality rate, with a big reason being huge jumps in suicides during downturns.
Yale Epidemiology: Higher unemployment causes higher death rates [yale.edu]
"“Employment is the essential element of social status and it establishes a person as a contributing member of society and also has very important implications for self-esteem,” said Brenner. “When that is taken away, people become susceptible to depression, cardiovascular disease, AIDS and many other illnesses that increase mortality.”"
Univ. of Zurich: The link between unemployment and suicide [weforum.org]
"The researchers found that there had been an increase in the relative risk of suicide associated with unemployment across all regions of 20% to 30%. There were an estimated 233,000 suicides a year between 2000–11, of which around 45,000 could be attributed to unemployment. In 2007, the year before the crash, there were 41,148 identified cases of suicide. In 2009, this number had risen to 46,131—an increase of 4,983 or 12%."
National Institutes of Health: The effect of unemployment on All-Cause Mortality [nih.gov]
"Unemployment was associated with a significant all-cause mortality risk relative to employment for men.This effect was robust to controlling for prior health and socio-demographic characteristics. "
So the economists of the parent story apparently are completely disregarding the rise of male sui
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From TFA:
We estimate a decline in suicides that is not statistically significant over the 2007-2009 period
but grows in magnitude in the 2010-2016 period to a statistically significant 1.7 percent decline
(standard error = 0.5) for each percentage point increase in the 2007-2009 unemployment rate. This
is striking in light of the secular increases in suicide since 2000 (Marcotte and Hansen 2023) as well
as state-year panel estimates that increases in unemployment are associated with contemporaneous
increases in
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalist growth kills (Score:1, Interesting)
Brilliant paper.
"We estimate that an increase in the unemployment rate of the magnitude of the Great Recession reduces the average, annual age-adjusted mortality rate by 2.3 percent, with effects persisting for at least 10 years.
Recession-induced mortality declines are driven primarily by external effects of reduced aggregate economic activity on mortality, and recession-induced reductions in air pollution appear to be a quantitatively important mechanism."
Pollution and work stress kill.
Good argument for "d
Re:Capitalist growth kills (Score:5, Interesting)
Or alternatively:
-advancements in medicine over the same time period improve mortality for the population
-air quality improvements associated with increased CAFE standards improve mortality
-air quality owing to a significant migration from coal to natural gas, wind, and solar aided health
-A million other factors that occurred over the same decade that someone could also correlate with this time period
It's... interesting, but the statistics are so fuzzy we can find nearly any conclusion we want by squinting a certain way.
Note they attribute decline in air pollution to the economy, but the decline in pollution continued well past any semblance of economic decline.In fact, the decline didn't come until years *after* the bottom fell out of the markets. The increase in pollution started pretty quickly after 2016. A fair case could be made that there's more a correlation with the presidential administration than economic conditions with air pollution. But again, the data is so noisy, anyone can find probably any point they want to make in it.
I don't think any of that applies (Score:2)
-lack of universal healthcare plus the privatization of large swaths of medicare mean a lot of folks can't access those advancements, which are mostly with incredibly expensive pharmaceuticals.
-Most of the CAFE standard's teeth were gutted in court cases.
-the migration to coal/gas might help, but it's also been going on since before 2008.
As other posters pointed out stress kills. 2008 was just shy of a great depression, and only a ton of intervention from our gov't (not nearly
Re:Capitalist growth kills (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like wishful thinking by someone who has no clue where their food, goods, medicine, and services comes from. Our standard of living is directly correlated to the amount of "stuff" the people in our economy produce on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis. If we all worked 10% less then our standard of living would fall roughly 10%, and for some people that would severely impact their health in other ways, like access to food and medicine.
Yes, I get that your solution is to just take all Jeff Bezos' money and give it to poor people, but this ignores the fact that Jeff Bezos' wealth is certainly not in cash and is mostly in ownership of a company which is an ongoing concern. It takes in resources and spits out services that are more valuable than the inputs, and it also employs a lot of people. If you were to take his wealth ($190B) and distribute it amongst all people in the US then each person would get shares worth about $574, or about 3.5 shares of Amazon each. In the last quarter of last year, earnings per share was about $1, so total this could give each person a universal basic income of $3.5 x 4 = $14 per year. I suppose you'd then want to do the same for every other publicly and privately traded company in the country, right? So sure, on paper that looks great.
Here's the first kicker... the people who own shares of companies are people who are focused on making more efficient and profitable enterprises. So they take the proceeds of that wealth every year and they re-invest it in growing their business or starting new businesses, both of which tend to increase the standard of living in the nation. These types of people who have the motivation to keep building larger and larger companies, and who actually have the skills to do it, are pretty rare. Now, they're also dangerous, but we have lots of rules and regulations to keep them in check, and as long as we keep constant vigilance over what they're doing, we reap the benefits of their wealth building activities, because the main way for Amazon to grow is to keep delivering what we as consumers want at a better price.
The second kicker is that most people given a lump of shares won't just live off the earnings (they will sell it), so you need the government to hold it for them (to provide the universal basic income you speak of). That means you now have the government managing these companies, and it's obvious to everyone who has ever worked with government organizations that they won't be as efficient and productive as if these were run privately.
So the only reasonable way to do this is to let private individuals own and run companies, and then tax them at whatever you think the maximum sustainable tax rate is, and use that to pay for your universal basic income. As you increase the tax rate you'll push companies out of your country, or some marginal companies will just fold because they no longer think it's worth it. So there's a limit, and this limit was actually tested back in the 70's in Scandinavian countries where they had total tax rates going up to around 60%, and they realized it didn't work and they pulled it back.
Now you're left with the current situation amongst developed nations... we have regulated market economies where people are allowed to own property and amass wealth with some limitations, and we have tax rates that are roughly 25 to 40%, and this appears to be the sustainable range. The fact is, we can't support a universal basic income at this taxation level, but we can afford social programs (like the ones we have) where we try to help the most vulnerable people in society (i.e. the ones who generally make serial bad decisions) and the rest of us have the freedom to live our lives and muddle through our days and figure it out for ourselves, and life's pretty good.
I know you have lots of brilliant ideas about how to fix all the problems of our world, and I salute you, but please brush up on how we got here before you go start breaking everything out of spite.
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"Stuff" does not equal quality of life.
Food, shelter, health care, education equal quality of life... everything else is just junk.
This was the point of the research "Lives vs. Livelihoods"
Capitalist pollution of the air, water, and piles of junk are detrimental to our well being.
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So what are you doing on a discussion forum that requires electronic devices and networking to function? That's not food, shelter, health care, nor education.
Also, the things you cite are *huge* contributors to the pollution and piles of junk.
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https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/... [iea.org.uk]
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Education... although the discussion here is usually disappointing.
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Yes, capitalist pollution of the air, water and piles of junk are making the earth uninhabitable.
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The 200 years of capitalism has caused the Anthropocene which is destroying life on earth.
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Re:Capitalist growth kills (Score:4, Interesting)
" If we all worked 10% less then our standard of living would fall roughly 10%"
Whoa! Amazing! Well, we work 40 hours a week, right? So imagine if we all worked 80 hours a week, all our standard of living would roughly double! It's an airtight case that for the best standard of living, we should all be working all our waking hours and that standard of living scales roughly linearly with however the fuck you've defined as work on the back of that beer soaked napkin you've got there.
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" If we all worked 10% less then our standard of living would fall roughly 10%"
Whoa! Amazing! Well, we work 40 hours a week, right? So imagine if we all worked 80 hours a week, all our standard of living would roughly double! It's an airtight case that for the best standard of living, we should all be working all our waking hours and that standard of living scales roughly linearly with however the fuck you've defined as work on the back of that beer soaked napkin you've got there.
Explains why Colombians who can work as many as 72 hours in a week (6 x 12 hours is not usual for services staff) have such a better lifestyle than Austrians who work a positively slovenly average of 33 hours per week (some as low as 24).
Re: Capitalist growth kills (Score:3)
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Re: Capitalist growth kills (Score:2)
"Our standard of living is directly correlated to the amount of "stuff" the people in our economy produce on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis. If we all worked 10% less then our standard of living would fall roughly 10%"
That linkage is only because when we work more we get paid more. Without that the opposite would be true because increased production is predicated upon more consumption of resources, and the inefficiencies in that process produce more pollution, people working are exposed to more
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The fact is, we can't support a universal basic income at this taxation level
I don't think this is true. The key is that the taxes must be adjusted so they take back 100% of the UBI from people who don't need it. In theory, this could be structured so that the actual cost is identical to the means-tested programs we have now... it's just that the means testing comes at tax time, rather than up front. Such a scheme would, of course, change the allocation of the social support payments and as a practical matter such a scheme couldn't be implemented all at once. It would probably need
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Good argument for "de-growth" and universal basic income.
Doesn't sound like that to me. Sounds like a good reason to actually enforce individual rights, not stomp on them through government grift. If a corporation pollutes your environment, they are stepping on your property rights and possibly also your body autonomy. That's the part that should matter and be something easy to litigate and resolve. Jumping straight to UBI because "life is hard" is a lame and ultimately unworkable solution. In the US, we already are facing a fiscal cliff with the $34T debt (and
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Tax the rich.
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Tax the rich.
I'd rather shrink the government to fit within it's budgeted means. Rich people add productivity to the economy, whereas government just drags the real economy down with tax-grift, regulation, and a very expensive corrupt military industrial complex. I think your solution is as likely as mine to find any grasp on reality.
Re: Capitalist growth kills (Score:2)
"Jumping straight to UBI because "life is hard" is a lame and ultimately unworkable solution."
Jumping straight to mischaracterizing arguments is a lame and ultimately typically boring activity.
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Therefore, we should stop all economic activity (Score:2)
If a recession reduces mortality, then a bigger recession should reduce it even more, right? So if we shut down all business activity, all manufacturing, all transportation, all farming, and so on, we'll all live forever!
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Correlation is clickbait not causation (Score:2)
Typical lazy msmash low-quality content but apparently the editors own Slashdot so it's their playground.
It would make far more profit if curated to be as it was in the era when Slashdot was so influential traffic it generated caused the "Slashdot effect" of non-adversarial DDOS to sites not equipped to handle the flood.