« Is The Gaza Attack A Just War? |
Main
| Signs Of The Times »
05 Jan 2009 01:22 pm
The Downturn Diet
Appleyard reports on the recession's silver lining:
The strange thing is that people get healthier in a
recession, according to Chris Ruhm, an economics professor at the University
of North Carolina. Some years ago he decided to test the conventional wisdom
that hard times make people sick. He found the opposite.
“People get physically healthier and mortality rates fall during bad economic
times,” he tells me. “It’s the opposite of what I expected to find.”
Studying recessions since the 1970s, Ruhm found that traffic deaths fell
noticeably, probably because of a combination of less drink consumed and
fewer miles driven. Even deaths from heart attacks, strokes, flu and
pneumonia fell.
Out of work and not eating out, people lose weight; and they tend to find
something more active to do than sitting in front of a computer screen.
Also, of course, they can’t afford to smoke and drink as much. “When times
are hard, they control the things they can control – they live healthily.”
On the other hand, Ruhm found a recessionary decline in mental wellbeing.
Suicide, anxiety and depression all increase as GDP falls.
Share This
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451c45669e2010536b0c73b970c
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference 'The Downturn Diet'
