Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/69442 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 7157
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
In this paper, we use the death file from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to investigate the relationship between county-level unemployment rates and mortality risk. After partialling out important confounding factors including baseline health status as well as state and industry fixed effects, we show that poor local labor market conditions are associated with higher mortality risk for working-aged men. In particular, we show that a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate increases their mortality hazard by 6%. There is little to no such relationship for people with weaker labor force attachments such as women or the elderly. Our results contribute to a growing body of work that suggests that poor economic conditions pose health risks and illustrate an important contrast with studies based on aggregate data.
Subjects: 
recessions
mortality
health
aggregation
JEL: 
I0
I12
J1
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
250.26 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.