Brookings Papers on Economic Activity· 2017Q1
Mortality and Morbidity in the 21st Century
- 1,447citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2017year
Short summary
Worsening labor market opportunities for low-education white adults since the 1970s are triggering a rise in mortality and morbidity across birth cohorts, with significant implications for future health outcomes.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Rising mortality and morbidity in the US are linked to deteriorating labor market conditions for low-education white adults.
- This trend is cohort-specific, worsening with each successive generation entering the workforce.
- Economic policies may require many years to counteract these negative health trends.
- Current midlife adults are projected to have poorer health in old age compared to older generations.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
from one birth cohort to the next, in the labor market, in marriage and child outcomes, and in health, is triggered by progressively worsening labor market opportunities at the time of entry for whites with low levels of education. This account, which fits much of the data, has the profoundly negative implication that policies, even ones that successfully improve earnings and jobs, or redistribute income, will take many years to reverse the mortality and morbidity increase, and that those in midlife now are likely to do much worse in old age than those currently older than 65. This is in contrast to an account in which resources affect health contemporaneously, so that those in midlife now can expect to do better in old age as they receive Social Security and Medicare. None of this implies that there are no policy levers to be pulled; preventing the over-prescription of opioids is an obvious target that would clearly be helpful.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2017 · DOI ↗
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Field: Health
HealthSocial Sciences