A new Thursday study is one of the first to measure deaths during the pandemic, not just by the virus, but by the economic devastation it caused. The study estimates that the rise in unemployment seen last spring has caused 30,000 deaths among working-age adults in the U.S. over the past year.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) looked at various sources of data to bring their numbers to the fore, including the government-collected unemployment and death rates reported in 2020. Last year was the highest monthly unemployment rate – 14.7% in April. 2020 – seen since the Great Depression. Then they mapped the data according to estimates in the past of how much a sudden increase in unemployment could contribute to excess deaths that would not otherwise occur.
According to their calculations, the decline in spring jobs associated with the pandemic will result in an excessive death toll of 30,231 Americans between the ages of 25 and 64 from April 2020 to March 2021.
The team’s findings, published uncertainty in the American Journal of Public Health. Using different assumptions about the risk of increased deaths due to unemployment, or relying on different measures of unemployment (some measures include people being able to work but not currently looking for work, for example, while others do not) not) changed their math. Thus, in different scenarios, unemployment-related deaths related to the pandemic ranged from as low as 8,315 to as high as 201,968.
Because the findings of the study are based only on the modeling of the expected death toll, it can not show us exactly what caused these deaths. But it is known that job loss contributes to poorer physical and mental health, often because people also end up losing their health insurance. The role of one suspected factor – suicide – is less clear. Some early evidence has suggested that suicides probably did not increase significantly in the U.S. last year. Still other data have shown that other health problems possibly related to unemployment peaks, such as drug overdose, has become more common.
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What is clear is that the impact of these excessive deaths, as well as those directly attributed to the viral disease, is not shared equally between different racial and socio-economic groups of Americans. According to the study, about 72% of these excess deaths were associated with Americans without a college degree, although this group represents only 37% of working-age Americans. Black Americans, men, and people older than 45 years were also more likely to die in their analysis.
It is difficult to discern the indirect consequences of a natural disaster, especially one that persists as long as the covid-19 pandemic occurs. Some people have argued that aggressive measures to curb the pandemic, which sometimes includes closing businesses such as pubs and restaurants, were counterproductive, in part because of the consequences of potentially lost jobs. However, some countries, including New Zealand, were able to completely stop the spread of the pandemic within their borders with these measures, allow them to bounce back strongly from their recessions.
Anyway, the US did no good work in stopping the pandemic, with nearly half a million deaths directly attributed to covid-19, of by to keep financially struggling Americans on a firm footing. It is likely that some of these deaths could have been prevented with simply better policies – a lesson the authors hope we can learn in the second year of covid-19.
“A number of different programs and policies can help prevent deaths related to unemployment and its excessive impact on vulnerable communities,” said lead author Ellicott Matthay, a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Health and Community at UCSF, per. mail to Gizmodo said. Some of the key ones are: (1) broader and broader unemployment benefits with broader admission requirements, (2) programs to promote rapid employment after job loss, and (3) access to health insurance and mental health / substance use services, especially for those which was hit the hardest. ”
This article was updated with comments from the lead author of the study.