Must-read: Janet Currie: “The Great Recession and the Health of Mothers”

Must-Read: Janet Currie: The Great Recession and the Health of Mothers: “Studies of the effects of economic fluctuations on health have come to wildly different conclusions…

…This may be because the effects are different for different groups. Using US data, this column looks at the health consequences of the Great Recession on mothers, a sub-population that has thus far been largely neglected in the literature. Increases in unemployment are found to have large negative health effects and to increase incidences of smoking and substance abuse among mothers. These effects appear to be concentrated on disadvantaged groups such as minorities, and point to short- and long-term consequences for their children.