Unemployment linked to pandemic linked to 30,000 more deaths in United States, study finds

A new study released Thursday is one of the first to try to measure deaths during the pandemic that were caused not by the virus itself but by the economic devastation it caused. The study estimates that the spike in unemployment seen last spring contributed to an additional 30,000 deaths among working-age adults in the United States over the past year.

Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) looked at various data sources to build their numbers, including government-collected unemployment and mortality data reported in 2020. Last year saw the highest monthly unemployment rate, 14.7% in April 2020 – seen since the Great Depression. Then, they matched that data with previous estimates of the contribution of a sudden increase in unemployment to excessive deaths that would not have happened otherwise.

According to their calculations, the spring decline in jobs linked to the pandemic will result in an excessive number of deaths of 30,231 Americans aged 25 to 64 from April 2020 to March 2021.

The team’s conclusions, published in the American Journal of Public Health, involve some uncertainty. Using different assumptions about the risk of increased deaths from unemployment, or relying on different measures of unemployment (some measures include people who are able to work but are not currently looking for a job). job as unemployed, for example, while others do not) have changed their calculations. Thus, in different scenarios, unemployment-related deaths related to the pandemic ranged from 8,315 to 201,968 people.

Since the study’s results are only based on modeling the expected death toll, it can’t show us exactly what may have caused these deaths. But we know that job loss contributes to poorer physical and mental health, often because people end up losing their health insurance as well. The role of an alleged factor – suicide – is less clear. Some early evidence has suggested that suicides probably did not increase significantly in the United States last year. Yet other data has shown that other health problems may be linked to spikes in unemployment, such as drug overdoses, has become more widespread.

What is clear is that the impact of these excessive deaths, just like those directly attributed to the viral disease, has not been shared equally among different racial and socioeconomic groups of Americans. According to the study, some 72% of those additional deaths involved Americans without a college degree, while that group represented only 37% of all Americans of working age. Black Americans, males, and those over 45 were also more likely to die disproportionately in their analysis.

It is difficult to separate the indirect effects of a natural disaster, especially one that lasts as long as the covid-19 pandemic. Some people have argued that aggressive measures to contain the pandemic, which at times have included closing businesses like bars and restaurants, have been counterproductive, in part because of the potential fallout of lost jobs. However, some countries, including New Zealand, have been able to completely stop the spread of the pandemic within their borders thanks to these measures, allowing to rebound strongly from their recessions.

In any case, the United States has not done a good job of stopping the pandemic, with nearly half a million deaths directly attributed to covid-19, or to keep financially struggling Americans on a solid footing. It is probable that some of these the deaths could have been prevented simply with better policy – a lesson the authors hope they can learn in the second year of covid-19.

“A number of different programs and policies could help prevent unemployment-related deaths and their disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities,” said lead author Ellicott Matthay, postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Community and Health. ‘UCSF, to Gizmodo in an email. Among the most important are: (1) more generous and extended unemployment benefits with broader eligibility criteria, (2) programs to promote rapid re-employment after job loss and (3) expanded access to health insurance and mental health use services, especially for those who have been hardest hit. “

This article has been updated with comments from the lead author of the study.