Population health and the economy: Mortality and the Great Recession in Europe

Abstract

We analyze the evolution of mortality-based health indicators in 27 European countries before and after the start of the Great Recession. We find that in the countries where the crisis has been particularly severe, mortality reductions in 2007–2010 were considerably bigger than in 2004–2007. Panel models adjusted for space-invariant and time-invariant factors show that an increase of 1 percentage point in the national unemployment rate is associated with a reduction of 0.5% (p