Economy, Public Health Related -- But Not How You'd Expect

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Public health and economy are walking toward each other on the sidewalk. They collide. Economy’s laid flat on the sidewalk, clutching its head, writhing in agony. Public health says: “Wow, I feel like a million bucks!”

It’s an exercise in understatement to describe recent findings coming out of a University of Michigan research project as counterintuitive. But as Scientific American explains in a currently published article, several years' worth of economic and public health data, including those from before, during and following the Great Depression, reveal a very surprising relationship between economic activity and public health indicators.

What the research team found in looking at gross domestic product (GDP), mortality rate, life expectancy, employment, among other health and economic data indices, was that the most dire years, economically speaking, from the Great Depression witnessed significant improvements in life expectancy and mortality. The economic boom years that followed the Great Depression saw mortality rates creep back up and life expectancy creep down.

While the researchers do not mean to diminish the stresses and difficulties that come with tough economic times — several of which have measurable public health impacts — the conclusions drawn by their study suggests that when the nation is feeling economically flush, we’re more prone to overindulge in a variety of unhealthy habits, dietary and otherwise, that negatively effect aggregate public health.

In addition, economic expansion only becomes possible as a result of millions of individuals working very hard over a prolonged period of time. Accordingly, people end up feeling the stresses that are inherent in an expanding economy: long days, little vacation, struggle to keep up with demand.

The public health payoff is a surprising silver lining indeed in looking at periods of time when silver is scarce for many.

Photo courtesy of National Archives, via Wikimedia Commons