Continuing the theme of the previous post, Research Australia has also been looking into the impact of an economic crunch on the community’s health.
Their investigations raise concerns for the wellbeing of many vulnerable groups – especially in rural Australia – but also show there are many unanswered questions about the relationship between recession and health.
Dr Megan Keaney and Rebecca James from Research Australia, write:
“Amongst the millions of column inches written and hours broadcast about the global financial crisis, very little attention has been given to whether recession is bad for our health. It is not difficult to imagine that becoming unemployed is bad for our mental health but are there wider impacts? If so what will they be, who will bear the burden and is our health and welfare system prepared to meet the challenge?
Mental health professionals are already seeing a steady stream of recession casualties. “BJ” is one such person. At age 57, he lost his business and savings late in 2008 and by November was severely depressed. He took an overdose of medication that left him with memory problems. When he left hospital, his ex-wife of 10 years took him home to a rural town, thinking that he would recover in a few weeks. Twelve months later she remains his carer and his brain injury means that he has no prospects of returning to work or living independently.
A report released this week by Research Australia, Australia’s Financial Crisis: Implications for Health and Research reveals that becoming jobless is associated with higher rates of a variety of mental health disorders. Suicide rates in young men track the unemployment rate and even keeping a job in an environment where job insecurity is heightened is associated with higher rates of psychological disturbance.
Although the jury is still out, studies from previous recessions suggest that becoming unemployed is bad for physical health too. For instance, a UK study from the 1980s showed that job loss led to a 37% higher chance of dying in the next 10 years.
The good news is that for mental health at least, return to the workforce as the economy recovers, leads to improved mental health. If that was the whole story then health departments might be comfortable that although some extra mental health services might be needed to meet extra need during recession, with economic recovery, the status quo should return. However, as BJ’s case highlights, it may not be that simple. And the difference is that recessions don’t have the same impact for everyone.
It is well accepted that there is a strong correlation between socio economic status and health. In Australia people who live in disadvantaged communities with higher rates of joblessness, lower household incomes, lower levels of education and lower social status have much poorer health outcomes across the board than the well off. In Australia there is a strong link between poverty and unemployment.
The real risk of recession is that it adds to the pool of long term unemployed (those people who are out of a job for 12 months or more). The longer people are out of job, their return to the workforce is less likely. Unemployment impacts on those who can least afford it – people with lower education, fewer skills, and intercurrent health problems. Not surprisingly rising unemployment concentrates disadvantage in already struggling communities on the urban fringe and in rural Australia.
We know that long-term unemployment and poverty is bad for our health. So what will this recession bring and are we well prepared to meet that challenge?
During the early 1990s recession the number of long term unemployed receiving income support increased from 170,000 to a peak of 438,000. Although the percentage of unemployed who are long term unemployed in 2009 is low relative to the early 1990s (about 13%) it is feared that this group will rise by 150% over the next two years.
Treasury’s recently revised forecast that unemployment will peak at 6.7% might appear reassuring given that in the last two recessions unemployment rose to well over 10 percent. However the number of people looking for work is not the whole story.
Over the last 20 years there has been enormous uptake of the Disability Support Pension with the number of recipients increasing from 307,000 in 1989 to 750,000 this year. This recession too is a story of underemployment with the labour under-utilization rate increasing from 9.9% to 13.6 % in the 12 months to August 2009.
In other words, 1.5 million Australians are unemployed and looking for work or would like to work more hours. There is no doubt that for these people and their families, financial stress is real. So how will their health suffer?
Long-term unemployment might mean higher rates of illness and premature death from a wide range of illness including heart disease, cancer, mental illness and even accidental injury. Importantly the impacts are likely to be intergenerational.
Western Australian research shows that children from disadvantaged families start out life behind the eight ball with problems including lower birth weight which are carried through to higher rates of childhood illness such as respiratory and mental illness, and even into adult life with international research suggesting that chronic adult disease has its roots in early childhood and even prenatal factors.
Much of this health disadvantage is mediated through social factors such as lower educational levels, fractured families and communities and in turn higher rates of health risk behaviours including smoking, alcohol use, less physical activity and obesity. A good start counts for a lot when it comes to health.
At the other end of life, research shows that for older workers ill health and unemployment is a two way street. Close to half of Australians aged over 45 who retire early do so because of ill health. Older workers who develop heart disease or mental illness are especially unlikely to re-enter the workforce.
For the health care system, more illness means more demand. Australians enjoy relatively good access to the health care system and long-term data tells us that unemployed people and those who reside in urban disadvantaged communities see their GPs more often and have more hospital visits.
However recent polling by Research Australia and MBF reveal that for many Australians, this recession is already affecting choices we make about our health. For instance, over the last 6 months financial stress has caused close to 20% of people to put off seeing a doctor or dentist and a staggering two million people have gone to work ill, rather than take sick leave, because of concern about job security.
Many questions remain unanswered. Recessions might be bad for our health – particularly if we lose our job and never work again. However, as the economy recovers jobs will be regained and fears about joblessness and financial stress will fade. But are there lingering problems for our health? We really do not now whether cyclical economic downturns impact our health in the long term and well accepted research demonstrating that relative socio- economic status correlates with health outcomes provides only some of the answers.
Most importantly when reflecting on the possible consequences of this downturn for our health, we need to consider whether government policies and programmes designed to limit the economic fall out of this recession are working.
Do we need different strategies that better target social and health impacts? Are we making the right investments now to support vulnerable groups so that we have a healthy and productive workforce as we come out of recession?
What is clear is that we need to better integrate our health, economic and social research effort so that we learn the lessons of this recession. Only then will we be able to deal with the public policy challenges that are the legacy of this recession or accompany the next one.”
• (Declaration: Croakey’s moderator Melissa Sweet had a hand in editing the report)
