Jul 25, 2014 02:03 PM EDT By J Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

Unemployment increase risk of death, while recessions reduce mortality, according to a recent study the Business Standard reported.

Researchers from Drexel University in Pennsylvania found that job loss is associated with a 73 percent increase in the probability of death -- the equivalent of adding 10 years to a person's age. However, this increased risk affects only the minority of people who are unemployed and is outweighed by health-promoting effects of an economic slowdown that affect the entire population, such as a drop in traffic fatalities and reduced atmospheric pollution.

The researchers found that each percentage-point increase in the individual's state unemployment rate reduces the hazard of death by approximately 9 percent, which is about the equivalent of making a person one year younger.

"Most people believe that being unemployed is a bad thing," José Tapia, lead author of the study and an economist and population health researcher in Drexel University's College of Arts and Sciences, said in a statement. "But what many people don't realize is that economic expansions -- which usually reduce joblessness -- also have effects that are harmful for society at large." 

For the study, researchers collected and used data from the U.S. Department of Labor and annual survey data between the years 1979 and 1997 from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a nationally representative longitudinal study of U.S. residents, the investigators created models in which the hazard, or probability, of death was statistically estimated. The data were used to estimate how the risk of death depends on both the employment conditions of the individuals and the contextual economic conditions surrounding them, as indicated by the unemployment rate of the state in which the individual is living.

They found that joblessness strongly and significantly raises the risk of death among those suffering it, and that periods of higher unemployment rates, such as recessions, are associated with a moderate but significant reduction in the risk of death among the entire population.

"The increase in the risk of death associated with being unemployed is very strong," said Tapia, "but it is restricted to unemployed persons, who generally are a small fraction of the population, even in a severe recession. Compared with the increase in the risk of death among the unemployed, the decrease of the mortality risk associated with a weakening economy is small, but the benefit spreads across the entire adult population. The compound result of both effects is that total mortality rises in expansions and falls in recessions."

The findings were recently published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

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