The Influence of the Business Cycle on Mortality

Abstract

We analyze the impact of short-run economic fluctuations on age-specific mortality using Bayesian time series econometrics and contribute to the debate on the procyclicality of mortality. For the first time, we examine the diering consequences of economic changes for all individual age classes. We employ a recently developed model to set up structural vector autoregressions of a latent mortality variable and of unemployment and GDP growth as main business cycle indicators. We find that young adults noticeably dier from the rest of the population. They exhibit increased mortality in a recession, whereas most of the other age classes between childhood and old age react with lower mortality to increased unemployment or decreased GDP growth. In order to avoid that opposed eects may cancel each other, our findings suggest to dierentiate closely between particular age classes, especially in the age range of young adults. The results for the United States in the period 1956‐2004 are confirmed by an international comparison with France and Japan. Long-term changes in the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and mortality are investigated with data since 1933.