van den Berg, GerardJ., Gerdtham, UlfG., von Hinke, S., Lindeboom, M., Lissdaniels, J., Sundquist, J. and Sundquist, K. (2017). Mortality and the business cycle: Evidence from individual and aggregated data Journal of Health Economics, 56:61--70.
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Affiliated author
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Publication year2017
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JournalJournal of Health Economics
There has been much interest recently in the relationship between economic conditions and mortality, with some studies showing that mortality is pro-cyclical, while others find the opposite. Some suggest that the aggregation level of analysis (e.g. individual vs. regional) matters. We use both individual and aggregated data on a sample of 20–64 year-old Swedish men from 1993 to 2007. Our results show that the association between the business cycle and mortality does not depend on the level of analysis: the sign and magnitude of the parameter estimates are similar at the individual level and the aggregate (county) level; both showing pro-cyclical mortality.