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Is unemployment associated with an increased risk of death?

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A 2011 meta-analysis in the journal Social Science & Medicine examines "235 mortality risk estimates from 42 studies" and finds that "unemployment is associated with a 63% higher risk of mortality in studies controlling for covariates." Regardless of whether job losses from Covid-19 lockdowns are brief or sustained, the study shows that the death correlation "is significant in both the short and long term," lending "some support to the hypothesis and previous findings that both the stress and the negative lifestyle effects associated with the onset of unemployment tend to persist even after a person has regained a job." Also of relevance to current job losses, the study indicates that added unemployment benefits, like those recently passed into federal law, are unlikely to mitigate the deadliness of job losses.




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