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Title: Unemployment and Health Behaviors over the Business Cycle: A Longitudinal View
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Colman, Gregory J. Dave, Dhaval |
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Unemployment and Health Behaviors over the Business Cycle: A Longitudinal View NBER Working Paper No. 20748, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2014. Also: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20748.pdf Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Exercise; Health/Health Status/SF-12 Scale; Nutritional Status/Nutrition/Consumption Behaviors; Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID); Physical Activity (see also Exercise); Smoking (see Cigarette Use); Unemployment We examine the first-order internal effects of unemployment on a range of health behaviors during the most recent recession using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). Consistent with prior studies based on cross-sectional data, we find that becoming unemployed is associated with a small increase in leisure-time exercise and in body weight, a moderate decrease in smoking, and a substantial decline in total physical activity. We also find that unemployment is associated with a decline in purchases of fast food. Together, these results imply that both energy consumption and expenditure decline in the U.S. during recessions, the net result being a slight increase in body weight. There is generally considerable heterogeneity in these effects across specific health behaviors, across the intensive and extensive margins, across the outcome distribution, and across gender. |
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Bibliography Citation
Colman, Gregory J. and Dhaval Dave. "Unemployment and Health Behaviors over the Business Cycle: A Longitudinal View." NBER Working Paper No. 20748, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2014. |