VEDANTAM: In some ways, David, recessions seem to change the mortality rate, and not in the direction you might expect. I was speaking with the economist Erin Strumpf at McGill University. Along with Thomas Charters, Sam Harper and Ari Nandi, she studied the effect of the Great Recession a decade ago by looking at 366 metropolitan areas in the United States, which cover about 80 percent of the U.S. population.
ERIN STRUMPF: We find that in areas where the unemployment rate is growing faster, mortality rates decline faster. So during the Great Recession in the U.S., we saw increases in the unemployment rate of about 4-5 percentage points, so that translates to about 50,000 to 60,000 fewer deaths per year, the same order of magnitude as the number of people who die from influenza and pneumonia every year.
The number of retired workers receiving Social Security benefits increased from approximately 33.5 million in 2009 to 45.1 million in 2019. This figure has increased at the same rate year-on-year over the past decade and is likely to continue into the
About a million of us retire each year. Take the number of 60k multiply by 3 to get serious illness. So out of seven older workers six will escape an expansion and retire, one dies. I assume most of the deaths are due to stress factors effecting the elder worker.
But under covid the elderly worker will see that risk of death shoot up to 2 or 3 out of seven, and is not going to take the chance.
Also we get 3.8 million births each year, or about one retied person for nearly four new babies. This seems about right for stability. There are about 2.8 million deaths per year.
What does this all mean for covid?
We have to change the retirement plans of elderly workers if we want to reopen. They will need to retire earlier than usual. So if we are doing cost benefit analysis then we have the adjustment cost of getting the younger worker into the higher positions sooner.
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