How bad are recessions?

... recessions don't bring unmitigated woe. During the past ten years of boom, a small, rather Eeyorish, group of American economists and psychologists has been trying to work out whether people really are better off in what Gordon Brown once called “the Golden Years” and now refers to as the “Age of Irresponsibility”.

Their answer is that recessions (rather than booms or depressions) might actually be a blessing. People tend to drink less, smoke fewer cigarettes and lose weight. They enrol in higher education, the air is cleaner, the roads are less crowded.

When times are good, research by Stanford University and the University of North Carolina shows that people of all classes tend not to take care of themselves and their families.

... This research backs up a paper, published in 2000, entitled Are Recessions Good for your Health? by Christopher Ruhm, professor of economics at the University of North Carolina. Professor Ruhm analysed death rates from 1972 to 1991, comparing them to economic shifts. He found that for every 1 per cent increase in unemployment rates, there was a 0.5 per cent decline in the death rate.

(In The Times Online)

In other news, a falling housing market may decrease divorce rates