[HN Gopher] Surprising public health benefit of unemployment?
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Surprising public health benefit of unemployment?
Author : RickJWagner
Score : 58 points
Date : 2024-04-10 11:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (timharford.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (timharford.com)
| jerlam wrote:
| TLDR: The health benefits are caused by a lack of air pollution,
| likely by less car traffic. Study only examined the United
| States, and was from the 2008 recession so the WFH wave hasn't
| happened yet.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I'm sure the the 2020+ data is messy (people dying of
| coronavirus, people not getting treatment for chronic diseases
| because hospitals are scary, etc.), but I'd be curious to see
| this same hypothesis tested there.
| verteu wrote:
| tldr: "The air becomes cleaner in areas where the economy slumps.
| The researchers estimate that this cleaner air accounts for more
| than one-third of the mortality reduction."
|
| From the paper: "Recession-induced mortality declines are driven
| primarily by external effects of reduced aggregate economic
| activity on mortality, and recession-induced reductions in air
| pollution appear to be a quantitatively important mechanism" [1]
|
| [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4717244
| mock-possum wrote:
| You know what a good way is to keep people honest without keeping
| them unemployed?
|
| _Remote work._
| bagels wrote:
| What do you mean by "keep people honest", and how does remote
| work achieve it?
| ooterness wrote:
| Possibly they meant "healthy"? Ducking autocorrect.
| milesvp wrote:
| I'm not sure how to interpret "keep people honest", but you
| should know that most crime statistics show downturns during
| economic slowdowns, for similar reasons as the article. People
| stay home more. Most crime seems to be crimes of convenience,
| and if you don't see the thing to steal/murder, then you don't
| steal/murder. I strongly suspect this is partly why
| premeditated crime tends to be dealt with more harshly.
|
| Source: good friends with a public defender.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| The public health benefits of clean air not well known. Air
| Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year. Why Do We Accept That
| as Normal?
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p...
|
| COVID killed approximately 6.5M+ over 3 years. Air pollution has
| more impact on public health.
|
| EVs can help a lot with air pollution:
| https://electrek.co/2023/02/10/surprise-electric-cars-are-al...
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Even ICE cars now days are so efficient that most of their
| pollution comes from the _tires_ not the tail pipe. This is
| doubly true for EVs.
|
| I fully support a transition to EVs, but if we really wish to
| cut down on air pollution why not strongly encourage remote
| work and cut out the commute entirely?
| no_wizard wrote:
| That's what kills me about all the companies that trot out
| these green initiatives and turn around and mandate RTO or
| hybrid arrangements.
|
| The commute forced upon the workers cancels out most if not
| all the good that the green initiatives do.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| That's because it's mostly virtue signalling rather than
| actually wanting to help the environment
| xvedejas wrote:
| Or do what many urban areas do efficiently: make it easy to
| commute by train. Even a bus commute cuts down the tire
| pollution per commuter significantly. Building more housing
| near job centers can help both shorten commutes and make mass
| transit more desirable.
| roody15 wrote:
| Just toss in "obesity". Greatest health crisis in the last 50
| years is undeniably rising obesity levels...
|
| https://usafacts.org/articles/obesity-rate-nearly-triples-un...
| RankingMember wrote:
| I think the positives of remote work vastly outweigh the
| negatives, particularly in orgs with established culture and a
| not-insane amount of turnover. This just adds another positive to
| the pile, though I think this particular benefit is unique to
| North America and its extremely car-centric transportation setup.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| You might want to tell _The Big Short_ scriptwriters that.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| If houses were made easy to move the back door could go straight
| to the place of work.
| TylerE wrote:
| You don't want to live in a mobile home. Trust me.
|
| "Easily moved" and "Not a death trap in a storm" are strongly
| negatively correlated.
| exabrial wrote:
| > The trope is that industrialising cities in Asia are smog-
| ridden
|
| I had to stop reading here. This isn't a trope. This is
| undeniable fact. I've seen it, lived it, breathed it, have
| pictures to show.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Depends where and when. China has largely fixed its air quality
| problems as of 2024.
| nikkwong wrote:
| I'm in China right now and I can unequivocally tell you that
| this is not true. I can hardly see the sun and it's not due
| to overcast weather.
| NickC25 wrote:
| They did so for the Olympics by stopping a lot of polluters
| from operating.
|
| As soon as the games left town, the pollution came back.
| em-bee wrote:
| beijing stayed clean after the olympics.
| PNewling wrote:
| I decided just to google Beijing air quality and both
| results came back... Not so good.
|
| "Dangerous Any exposure to the air, even for a few
| minutes, can lead to serious health effects on everybody.
| Avoid outdoor activities."
| https://www.accuweather.com/en/cn/beijing/101924/air-
| quality...
|
| "Very Unhealthy Health warnings of emergency conditions.
| The entire population is more likely to be affected."
| https://aqicn.org/city/beijing/
|
| So not sure I fully believe that.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Source for this being categorically false [1].
|
| [1] https://www.iqair.com/us/china/beijing
|
| See the list of cities in China on the left for more...
| ebiester wrote:
| The trope is the "but that" portion - that is, Western Europe
| and the US didn't have such concerns.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| ... Do you think maybe it's worth reading the whole article?
|
| > The air becomes cleaner in areas where the economy slumps.
| The researchers estimate that this cleaner air accounts for
| more than one-third of the mortality reduction. This may come
| as a surprise, because we are not accustomed to regarding air
| pollution as a problem for rich countries -- the trope is that
| industrialising cities in Asia are smog-ridden, but that for
| America and Europe the only pollutant that need worry us is the
| greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| In fact what first comes to mind: no work, no commute, less car
| accidents. Are those accounted for in the study?
|
| Also, smokers who get unemployed, will smoke more, out of
| boredom.
|
| Just to say, I find the result of the study quite hard to
| believe.
| xyzwave wrote:
| > Also, smokers who get unemployed, will smoke more, out of
| boredom.
|
| Unemployed smokers will have less disposable income, and may
| not be able to afford to smoke more.
| roughly wrote:
| This has been known for some time now - the health benefits alone
| of decarbonization would pay for the cost:
| https://www.who.int/news/item/05-12-2018-health-benefits-far...
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| This link[1] takes you to the paper.
|
| From "external influences": _We explore three main potential
| sources of positive external health effects from recessions
| suggested by prior literature: reductions in the spread of
| infectious disease (Adda 2016), increases in the quality of
| healthcare (Stevens et al. 2015), and reductions in pollution
| (Chay and Greenstone 2003; Heutel and Ruhm 2016). We find little
| support for a role for the first two classes of external effects,
| but evidence consistent with a quantitatively important role for
| recession-induced reductions in air pollution in explaining about
| 40 percent of the recession-induced mortality declines._
|
| They don't cover lower driving (fewer accidents), health care
| tied to employment (under reported health incidents), or work
| place accidents (deaths due to statistical risk in higher risk
| jobs like construction, mining, etc.)
|
| So no, not a particularly insightful study in my opinion.
|
| [1]
| https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2024/program/paper/TEE9A8Q...
| redavni wrote:
| I didn't read the entire paper, but I don't see lowered stress
| and lack of sleep mentioned anywhere. These would be the most
| obvious answers and should be addressed.
|
| https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Lives-vs...
| passwordoops wrote:
| How dare you ruin a good headline and "think piece" with
| critical thinking!
|
| /s
| spacecadet wrote:
| Marketing content to sell unscientific books.
| imzadi wrote:
| Ehh... I suspect that the cleaner air is more a correlation than
| a causation. It seems like fewer accidents due to fewer drivers
| would be a more direct cause. The cleaner air is just a side
| effect. I didn't see any mention of accident rates in the
| article.
| yujian wrote:
| tl;dr - less work = less pollution = less likely old people dying
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Yes, the climate wins with high unemployment.
|
| People lose their homes, become homeless, that saves a lot of
| energy. A home needs to be cooled, warmed, light, tv etc all that
| regular stuff. If society is lucky, the person will not be able
| to own a car either. Also doesn't waste energy on cooking, doest
| shower much.
|
| When a person is homeless, he contributes vastly less pollution.
|
| The homeless may be the people contributing the best effort to
| limit pollution.
|
| We could probably hit our targets for climate change by
| increasing the homeless population by several magnitudes.
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