An extensive research conducted in the 1980s concluded that every 1% increase in unemployment led to 37,000 deaths. The deaths were attributed to substance abuse, sucide and heart attacks. People who are fired from their jobs see a sharp increase in their stress levels, a known psychological trigger. The study argued that this principally happened because the unemployed suddenly had zero access to healthcare, and thus no means to medically de-stress.
A 2011 study followed on similar lines. Even though it was a medical study and was conducted by ‘the other kind of doctors’, it had economic implications nonetheless. It predicted that the risk of death increases by a whopping 63 percent when a person becomes unemployed, and that the number of people is actually just 10,400 per percentage rise.
In today’s economy–rather, a corona-virus-hit economy–we’re experiencing a weird mixture of structural and cyclical unemployment. The unfavorable economic condition at the moment, even though largely marked by structural unemployment, does supply hope that people will be able to go back to work once everything settles.
So is the 1980s study correct in the present scenario? Or should we take the more recent medical study to be decisive? Is this true for just the developed nations or can the results be applied equally to developing ones?
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