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Access Type
WSU Access
Date of Award
January 2024
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
Economics
First Advisor
Young-Ro Yoon
Abstract
This dissertation examines the relationship between unemployment and mortality rate using panel data from American states. Deaths of despair refer to the rise in mortality rate caused by suicide, alcohol-related deaths, and drug overdose deaths during economic recovery. In the first study, we analyzed the correlation between unemployment and deaths of despair at the state level from 2008 to 2019 by using fixed-effect regression. To conduct this study, we gathered data on deaths of despair from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). We hypothesized that there is a significant correlation between unemployment and mortality due to suicide, alcohol-related deaths, and drug overdose deaths. The findings show that an increase in unemployment leads to a rise in alcohol-related deaths by approximately 10.1%. However, there is no significant connection between unemployment and either suicide or drug overdose deaths when the state-year fixed effect is taken into account. Therefore, unemployment cannot be a significant contributor to drug overdose deaths and suicide. In the second study, we focused on the county level between the years 2010 and 2019 to explore the correlation between the unemployment rate and total mortality. Our data on total mortality was obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). We analyze panel data on population distribution by counties in the United States, encompassing a variety of age groups. The main finding is that after state-year fixed effect regression was applied, there was no significant correlation between unemployment and total mortality. Moreover, by using sub-samples of our data, we found a positive and statistically significant correlation between unemployment and total mortality at low drinking levels, whereas we found a negative and statistically significant correlation between unemployment and total mortality at high drinking levels. On the other hand, we found the unemployment rate has an insignificant correlation with total mortality at levels of low obesity, high obesity, low smoking, and high smoking. Therefore, the study concluded that unemployment had no significant correlation with total mortality.
Recommended Citation
Alzahrani, Hussain Saleh, "Unemployment And Mortality: A Panel Study Of American States, 2008-2019" (2024). Wayne State University Dissertations. 4031.
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/4031
