Looking for a silver lining during the economic downturn? Fortune magazine?s Geoff Colvin finds one in some North Carolina-based research:
The truth, little known but well documented, is that death rates decline and healthy living habits improve in tough economic times.
Extensive research by Christopher J. Ruhm, an economist at the University of North Carolina, shows that a one-percentage-point rise in the unemployment rate reduces the death rate by 0.5%. Those are U.S. results, but other studies show the same effect in Spain, Germany, and the 23 OECD countries in aggregate.
Colvin says Ruhm?s data ought to send a message:
A lesson for health-care reformers is that their focus, our system of insurance and care, isn’t the root cause of America’s high medical costs. The recent downturn in dead people is a reminder that the No. 1 culprit for rising health-care costs is lifestyle.
In other words, ?health-insurance reform? is not likely to generate all of the benefits its supporters tout.
