Assessing the short term health impact of the Great Recession in the European Union: a cross-country panel analysis.

BACKGROUND: There are great concerns and some initial country-specific, descriptive evidence about potential adverse health consequences of the recent Great Recession. METHODS: Using data for 23 European Union countries we examine the short-term impact of macroeconomic decline during the Great Recession on a range of health and health behaviour indicators. We also examine whether the effect differed between countries according to the level of social protection provided. RESULTS: Overall, during the recent recession, an increase of one percentage point in the standardised unemployment rate has been associated with a statistically significant decrease in the following mortality rates: all-cause-mortality (3.4%), cardiovascular diseases (3.7%), cirrhosis- and chronic liver disease-related mortality (9.2%), motor vehicle accident-related mortality (11.5%), parasitic infection-related mortality (4.1%), but an increase in the suicide rate (34.1%). In general, the effects were more marked in countries with lower levels of social protection, compared to those with higher levels. CONCLUSIONS: An increase in the unemployment rate during the Great Recession has had a beneficial health effect on average across EU countries, except for suicide mortality. Social protection expenditures appear to help countries "smooth" the health response to a recession, limiting health damage but also forgoing potential health gains that could otherwise result.

Structural Transformation and Employment Generation in India: Past Performance and the Way Forward.

Historical experience suggests that a sustained rise in per capita incomes and improvement in employment conditions is not attainable without a structural transformation that moves surplus labour from agriculture and other informal economic activities to higher productivity activities in the non-farm economy. In this paper, I analyse India's performance from a cross-country comparative perspective, estimating the growth semi-elasticity of structural change. Using a cross-country panel regression, I estimate the effectiveness of growth in moving workers away from agricultural and informal activities as compared to other developing countries at similar levels of per capita income. I show that the performance in pulling workers out of agriculture is as expected given its level and growth of GDP per capita, but the same is not true for pulling workers out of the informal sector. I also propose the following five indicators that need to be kept track of when evaluating the growth process: the growth elasticity of employment, the growth semi-elasticity of structural change, the growth of labour productivity in the subsistence sector, the share of the organised sector in total employment and the workforce participation rate. Comparing these indicators across periods, states, regions or countries, allows us to understand which sets of policies have worked better than others to effective improvements in employment conditions. And taken together the indicators allow us to set structural change targets as well as to say whether the current pattern of growth is going to be sufficient to meet those targets.