In hard times, people trade fatty restaurant meals for healthier home cooking.

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Most people are worried about the health of the economy. But does the economy also affect your health- It does, but not always in ways you might expect. The data on how an economic downturn influences an individual’s health are mixed.
It’s clear that long-term economic gains lead to improvements in a population’s overall health, in developing and industrialized societies alike.
But whether the current economic slump will take a toll on your own health depends, in part, on your health habits when times are good. And economic studies suggest that people tend not to take care of themselves in boom times - drinking too much, dining on fat-laden restaurant meals and skipping exercise and doctors’ appointments because of work-related time commitments.
“The value of time is higher during good economic times,” said Grant Miller, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University in California. “So people work more and do less of the things that are good for them, like cooking at home and exercising; and people experience more stress due to the rigors of hard work during booms.”
Similar patterns have been seen in some developing nations. Dr. Miller, who is studying the effects of coffee prices on health in Colombia, says that even though falling prices are bad for the economy, they appear to improve health and mortality rates. When prices are low, laborers have more time to care for their children.
In the United States, a similar effect appeared in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, according to a 2007 paper by Dr. Miller and colleagues in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The data seem to contradict research in the 1970s suggesting that in hard times there are more deaths from heart disease, cirrhosis, suicide and homicide, as well as more admissions to mental hospitals. But those findings have not been replicated, and several economists have pointed out flaws in the research.
In May 2000, the Quarterly Journal of Economics published a surprising paper called “Are Recessions Good for Your Health-” by Christopher J. Ruhm, professor of economics at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, based on an analysis measuring death rates and health behavior against economic shifts and jobless rates from 1972 to 1991.
Dr. Ruhm found that death rates declined sharply in the 1974 and 1982 recessions, and increased in the economic recovery of the 1980s. Over all, the death rate fell by more than 8 percent in the 20-year period of mostly economic decline, led by drops in heart disease and car crashes.
The economic downturn did appear to take a toll on factors having less to do with prevention and more to do with mental well-being and access to health care. For instance, cancer deaths rose 23 percent, and deaths from flu and pneumonia increased slightly. Suicides rose 2 percent, homicides 12 percent.
The issue that may matter most in an economic crisis is not related to jobs or income, but whether there is an adequatehealth safety net available.