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"Economic Recession"
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Economic Recession and Fertility in the Developed World
This article reviews research on the effects of economic recessions on fertility in the developed world. We study how economic downturns, as measured by various indicators, especially by declining GDP levels, falling consumer confidence, and rising unemployment, were found to affect fertility. We also discuss particular mechanisms through which the recession may have influenced fertility behavior, including the effects of economic uncertainty, falling income, changes in the housing market, and rising enrollment in higher education, and also factors that influence fertility indirectly such as declining marriage rates. Most studies find that fertility tends to be pro-cyclical and often rises and declines with the ups and downs of the business cycle. Usually, these aggregate effects are relatively small (typically, a few percentage points) and of short durations; in addition they often influence especially the timing of childbearing and in most cases do not leave an imprint on cohort fertility levels. Therefore, major long-term fertility shifts often continue seemingly uninterrupted during the recession—including the fertility declines before and during the Great Depression of the 1930s and before and during the oil shock crises of the 1970s. Changes in the opportunity costs of childbearing and fertility behavior during economic downturn vary by sex, age, social status, and number of children; childless young adults are usually most affected. Furthermore, various policies and institutions may modify or even reverse the relationship between recessions and fertility. The first evidence pertaining to the recent recession falls in line with these findings. In most countries, the recession has brought a decline in the number of births and fertility rates, often marking a sharp halt to the previous decade of rising fertility rates.
Journal Article
Mental health outcomes in times of economic recession: a systematic literature review
Background
Countries in recession experience high unemployment rates and a decline in living conditions, which, it has been suggested, negatively influences their populations’ health. The present review examines the recent evidence of the possible association between economic recessions and mental health outcomes.
Methods
Literature review of records identified through Medline, PsycINFO, SciELO, and EBSCO Host. Only original research papers, published between 2004 and 2014, peer-reviewed, non-qualitative research, and reporting on associations between economic factors and proxies of mental health were considered.
Results
One-hundred-one papers met the inclusion criteria. The evidence was consistent that economic recessions and mediators such as unemployment, income decline, and unmanageable debts are significantly associated with poor mental wellbeing, increased rates of common mental disorders, substance-related disorders, and suicidal behaviours.
Conclusion
On the basis of a thorough analysis of the selected investigations, we conclude that periods of economic recession are possibly associated with a higher prevalence of mental health problems, including common mental disorders, substance disorders, and ultimately suicidal behaviour. Most of the research is based on cross-sectional studies, which seriously limits causality inferences. Conclusions are summarised, taking into account international policy recommendations concerning the cost-effective measures that can possibly reduce the occurrence of negative mental health outcomes in populations during periods of economic recession.
Journal Article
Relationship of suicide rates to economic variables in Europe: 2000–2011
It is unclear whether there is a direct link between economic crises and changes in suicide rates.
The Lopez-Ibor Foundation launched an initiative to study the possible impact of the economic crisis on European suicide rates.
Data was gathered and analysed from 29 European countries and included the number of deaths by suicide in men and women, the unemployment rate, the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, the annual economic growth rate and inflation.
There was a strong correlation between suicide rates and all economic indices except GPD per capita in men but only a correlation with unemployment in women. However, the increase in suicide rates occurred several months before the economic crisis emerged.
Overall, this study confirms a general relationship between the economic environment and suicide rates; however, it does not support there being a clear causal relationship between the current economic crisis and an increase in the suicide rate.
Journal Article
Wealth Disparities Before and After the Great Recession
The collapse of the labor, housing, and stock markets beginning in 2007 created unprecedented challenges for American families. This study examines disparities in wealth holdings leading up to the Great Recession and during the first years of the recovery. All socioeconomic groups experienced declines in wealth following the recession, with higher wealth families experiencing larger absolute declines. In percentage terms, however, the declines were greater for less advantaged groups as measured by minority status, education, and prerecession income and wealth, leading to a substantial rise in wealth inequality in just a few years. Despite large changes in wealth, longitudinal analyses demonstrate little change in mobility in the ranking of particular families in the wealth distribution. Between 2007 and 2011, one-fourth of American families lost at least 75 percent of their wealth, and more than half of all families lost at least 25 percent of their wealth. Multivariate longitudinal analyses document that these large relative losses were disproportionally concentrated among lower-income, less educated, and minority households.
Journal Article
Explaining the Decline in Mexico-U.S. Migration: The Effect of the Great Recession
The rate of Mexico-U.S. migration has declined precipitously in recent years. From 25 migrants per thousand in 2005, the annual international migration rate for Mexican men dropped to 7 per thousand by 2012. If sustained, this low migration rate is likely to have a profound effect on the ethnic and national-origin composition of the U.S. population. This study examines the origins of the migration decline using a nationally representative panel survey of Mexican households. The results support an explanation that attributes a large part of the decline to lower labor demand for Mexican immigrants in the United States. Decreases in labor demand in industrial sectors that employ a large percentage of Mexican-born workers, such as construction, are found to be strongly associated with lower rates of migration for Mexican men. Second, changes in migrant selectivity are also consistent with an economic explanation for the decline in international migration. The largest declines in migration occurred precisely among the demographic groups most affected by the Great Recession: namely, economically active young men with low education. Results from the statistical analysis also show that the reduction in labor demand in key sectors of the U.S. economy resulted in a more positive educational selectivity of young migrants.
Journal Article
When the Economy Falters, Do People Spend or Save? Responses to Resource Scarcity Depend on Childhood Environments
Just as modern economies undergo periods of boom and bust, human ancestors experienced cycles of abundance and famine. Is the adaptive response when resources become scarce to save for the future or to spend money on immediate gains? Drawing on life-history theory, we propose that people's responses to resource scarcity depend on the harshness of their early-life environment, as reflected by childhood socioeconomic status (SES). In the three experiments reported here, we tested how people from different childhood environments responded to resource scarcity. We found that people who grew up in lower-SES environments were more impulsive, took more risks, and approached temptations more quickly. Conversely, people who grew up in higher-SES environments were less impulsive, took fewer risks, and approached temptations more slowly. Responses similarly diverged according to people's oxidative-stress levels—a urinary biomarker of cumulative stress exposure. Overall, whereas tendencies associated with early-life environments were dormant in benign conditions, they emerged under conditions of economic uncertainty.
Journal Article
A Broken Public? Americans' Responses to the Great Recession
Did Americans respond to the recent Great Recession by demanding that government provide policy solutions to rising income insecurity, an expectation of state-of-the-art theorizing on the dynamics of mass opinion? Or did the recession erode support for government activism, in line with alternative scholarship pointing to economic factors having the reverse effect? We find that public support for government social programs declined sharply between 2008 and 2010, yet both fixed-effects and repeated survey analyses suggest economic change had little impact on policy-attitude formation. What accounts for these surprising developments? We consider alternative microfoundations emphasizing the importance of prior beliefs and biases to the formation of policy attitudes. Analyzing the General Social Surveys panel, our results suggest political partisanship has been central. Gallup and Evaluations of Government and Society surveys provide further evidence against the potentially confounding scenario of government overreach, in which federal programs adopted during the recession and the Obama presidency propelled voters away from government. We note implications for theoretical models of opinion formation, as well as directions for partisanship scholarship and interdisciplinary research on the Great Recession.
Journal Article
Entering Adulthood in a Recession Tempers Later Narcissism
Despite widespread interest in narcissism, relatively little is known about the conditions that encourage or dampen it. Drawing on research showing that macroenvironmental conditions in emerging adulthood can leave a lasting imprint on attitudes and behaviors, I argue that people who enter adulthood during recessions are less likely to be narcissistic later in life than those who come of age in more prosperous times. Using large samples of American adults, Studies 1 and 2 showed that people who entered adulthood during worse economic times endorsed fewer narcissistic items as older adults. Study 3 extended these findings to a behavioral manifestation of narcissism: the relative pay of CEOs. CEOs who came of age in worse economic times paid themselves less relative to other top executives in their firms. These findings suggest that macroenvironmental experiences at a critical life stage can have lasting implications for how unique, sepcial, and deserving people believe themselves to be.
Journal Article
This Time It's Real: The End of Unipolarity and the Pax Americana
Before the Great Recession's foreshocks in fall 2007, most American security studies scholars believed that unipolarity—and perforce American hegemony—would be enduring features of international politics far into the future. However, in the Great Recession's aftermath, it is apparent that much has changed since 2007. Predictions of continuing unipolarity have been superseded by premonitions of American decline and geopolitical transformation. The Great Recession has had a two-fold impact. First, it highlighted the shift of global wealth—and power—from West to East, a trend illustrated by China's breathtakingly rapid rise to great power status. Second, it has raised doubts about the robustness of US primacy's economic and financial underpinnings. This article argues that the Aunipolar moment is over, and the Pax Americana—the era of American ascendancy in international politics that began in 1945—is fast winding down. This article challenges the conventional wisdom among International Relations/Security Studies scholars on three counts. First, it shows that contrary to the claims of unipolar stability theorists, the distribution of power in the international system no longer is unipolar. Second, this article revisits the 1980s' debate about American decline and demonstrates that the Great Recession has vindicated the so-called declinists of that decade. Finally, this article takes on the Ainstitutional lock-in argument, which holds that by strengthening the Pax Americana's legacy institutions, the United States can perpetuate the essential elements of the international order it constructed following World War II even as the material foundations of American primacy erode.
Journal Article