A new study conducted on Thursday is one of the first to try to measure the deaths during the pandemic caused not by the virus itself, but by the economic devastation it caused. The study estimates that the rise in unemployment recorded last spring helped cause an additional 30,000 deaths among working-age adults in the U.S. over the past year.
Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) examined several data sources to arrive at their number, including unemployment and mortality data collected by the government published in 2020. Last year the rate of unemployment was recorded. highest monthly unemployment reported: 14.7% in April. 2020: seen from the Great Depression. They then assigned these data to previous estimates of how much a sudden rise in unemployment could contribute to an excess of deaths that would not have happened otherwise.
According to his calculations, the spring fall of pandemic-related jobs will cause an excess of deaths of 30,231 Americans between the ages of 25 and 64, from April 2020 to March 2021.
The team’s conclusions, published in the American Journal of Public Health, involves some uncertainty. The use of different assumptions about the increased risk of death from unemployment or confidence in different measures of unemployment (some measures include people who are able to work but who are not currently looking for work as unemployed, for example, while others no) they changed their math. Thus, in different scenarios, the pandemic-related deaths related to unemployment ranged from 8,315 to 201,968.
Because the study’s findings are based solely on modeling the expected balance of deaths, it cannot show us exactly what may have caused these deaths. But job loss is known to contribute to worse physical and mental health, often because people also end up losing their health insurance. The role of a presumptive factor, suicide, is less clear. There are some first tests suggested suicides are unlikely to have increased significantly in the United States last year. However, other data have shown that other health problems possibly related to unemployment peaks, such as drug overdose, became more frequent.
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What is clear is that the impact of this excess of deaths, similar to those directly attributed to viral disease, was not shared equitably among different American racial and socioeconomic groups. According to the study, about 72% of this excess of deaths affected Americans without college education, although this group only accounts for 37% of Americans of working age in general. Black Americans, men, and people over the age of 45 were also disproportionately more likely to die in their analysis.
It is difficult to separate the indirect effects of a natural disaster, especially one that has happened as long as you have the covid-19 pandemic. Some people have argued that aggressive measures to contain the pandemic, which have sometimes included stopping businesses such as bars and restaurants, have been counterproductive, in part because of the fall in potentially lost jobs. However, some countries, including New Zealand, were able to completely stop the spread of the pandemic to their borders through these measures, allow for them to recover from their recessions.
In any case, the US Nor has it done a good job of stopping the pandemic, with nearly half a million deaths attributed directly to covid-19, oa keep Americans with financial difficulties solid. Probably some of these deaths could have been avoided with a simply better policy, a lesson the authors hope we can learn in the second year of covid-19.
“There are several different programs and policies that could help prevent unemployment-related deaths and their disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities,” lead author Ellicott Matthay, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center, told Gizmodo in an email. for UCSF Health and Community. “Some of the highlights include: (1) more generous and expanded unemployment benefits with broader eligibility criteria, (2) programs to promote rapid re-employment after loss of employment, and (3) expand access to health insurance and mental health / substance use services, especially for those who have been most affected. “
This article has been updated with comments from the lead author of the study.