published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2005, 24 (2), 341-363
Using microdata for adults from the 1987-2000 years of the Behavioral Risk Factor
Surveillance System, I show that smoking and height-adjusted weight decline during
temporary economic downturns while leisure-time physical activity rises. The drop in tobacco
use occurs disproportionately among heavy smokers, the fall in body weight among the
severely obese, and the increase in exercise among those who were completely inactive.
Declining work hours may provide one reason why behaviors become healthier when the
economy weakens, possibly by increasing the non-market time available for lifestyle
investments. Conversely, there is little evidence that reductions in income play an important
role. The overall conclusion is that changes in behaviors supply one mechanism for the
procyclical variation in mortality and morbidity observed in recent research.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.