Published 10 March 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b829
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b829

Editorials

Unemployment and health

Health benefits vary according to the method of reducing unemployment

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The best guides we have to the possible future effects of mass unemployment are studies of previous epidemics. In men who had been continuously employed for at least five years in the late 1970s, mortality doubled in the five years after redundancy for those aged 40-59 in 1980.1 Adjustment for socioeconomic variables, previous health related behaviours, and other health indicators had almost no effect on this increase.1 The increased risk of mortality after redundancy tends to be greater in men than in women2 because men are generally affected more from a prevailing belief that when things go wrong no one will be there to help.3

The detrimental effects of unemployment were widely recognised after the great depression of the 1930s. However, by the early 1980s unemployment became viewed, as it was by some in the very early 1930s, as a "price worth paying." We learnt through bitter experience again that . . . [Full text of this article]

Danny Dorling, professor of human geography

1 Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN

daniel.dorling@sheffield.ac.uk


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BMJ 1994 308: 1135-1139. [Abstract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Janlert, U. (2009). Economic crisis, unemployment and public health. Scand J Public Health 37: 783-784  
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