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Surprising public health benefit of unemployment?
- Olesya000 3y ago[dead]
- Olesya000 3y ago[dead]
- jerlam 3y agoTLDR: The health benefits are caused by a lack of air pollution, likely by less car traffic. Study only examined the United States, and was from the 2008 recession so the WFH wave hasn't happened yet.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bsimpson 3y agoI'm sure the the 2020+ data is messy (people dying of coronavirus, people not getting treatment for chronic diseases because hospitals are scary, etc.), but I'd be curious to see this same hypothesis tested there.
- verteu 3y agotldr: "The air becomes cleaner in areas where the economy slumps. The researchers estimate that this cleaner air accounts for more than one-third of the mortality reduction." From the paper: "Recession-induced mortality declines are driven primarily by external effects of reduced aggregate economic activity on mortality, and recession-induced reductions in air pollution appear to be a quantitatively important mechanism" [1] [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4717244 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4717244
- mock-possum 3y agoYou know what a good way is to keep people honest without keeping them unemployed? Remote work.
- bagels 3y agoWhat do you mean by "keep people honest", and how does remote work achieve it?
- ooterness 3y agoPossibly they meant "healthy"? Ducking autocorrect.
- hackable_sand 3y agoRemote work requires a lot of trust. That's my read, but also independent of gp comment.
- milesvp 3y agoI'm not sure how to interpret "keep people honest", but you should know that most crime statistics show downturns during economic slowdowns, for similar reasons as the article. People stay home more. Most crime seems to be crimes of convenience, and if you don't see the thing to steal/murder, then you don't steal/murder. I strongly suspect this is partly why premeditated crime tends to be dealt with more harshly. Source: good friends with a public defender.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago[flagged]
- bee_rider 3y agoHopefully we can build a society where those things aren’t comparable.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thelastgallon 3y agoThe public health benefits of clean air not well known. Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year. Why Do We Accept That as Normal? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-pollution-deaths-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p... COVID killed approximately 6.5M+ over 3 years. Air pollution has more impact on public health. EVs can help a lot with air pollution: https://electrek.co/2023/02/10/surprise-electric-cars-are-already-making-california-healthier/ https://electrek.co/2023/02/10/surprise-electric-cars-are-al...
- wing-_-nuts 3y agoEven ICE cars now days are so efficient that most of their pollution comes from the tires not the tail pipe. This is doubly true for EVs. I fully support a transition to EVs, but if we really wish to cut down on air pollution why not strongly encourage remote work and cut out the commute entirely?
- no_wizard 3y agoThat’s what kills me about all the companies that trot out these green initiatives and turn around and mandate RTO or hybrid arrangements. The commute forced upon the workers cancels out most if not all the good that the green initiatives do.
- vinyl7 3y agoThat's because it's mostly virtue signalling rather than actually wanting to help the environment
- xvedejas 3y agoOr do what many urban areas do efficiently: make it easy to commute by train. Even a bus commute cuts down the tire pollution per commuter significantly. Building more housing near job centers can help both shorten commutes and make mass transit more desirable.
- roody15 3y ago
- RankingMember 3y agoI think the positives of remote work vastly outweigh the negatives, particularly in orgs with established culture and a not-insane amount of turnover. This just adds another positive to the pile, though I think this particular benefit is unique to North America and its extremely car-centric transportation setup.
- selimthegrim 3y agoYou might want to tell The Big Short scriptwriters that.
- throwaway14356 3y agoIf houses were made easy to move the back door could go straight to the place of work.
- TylerE 3y agoYou don't want to live in a mobile home. Trust me. "Easily moved" and "Not a death trap in a storm" are strongly negatively correlated.
- throwaway14356 3y agoI didn't want to be specific since many solutions could be worth exploring and I have no idea which standardized form factor would be best. Something like a drawer or set of drawers. Only the front and the floor would have to be strong. The rest is a concrete shell that stays behind. Not all rooms need to be personalized. The employer can provide some extras as a perk. The drawer doesn't need to be full length. If there is a room between home and work shouldn't bother anyone.
- Hrnrurj 3y ago[flagged]
- fwip 3y agoWomen are about 46% of the labor force.
- Hrnrurj 3y ago[flagged]
- bagels 3y agoSource? Quick Google turns up ~89% from Statistia: https://www.statista.com/statistics/187127/number-of-occupational-injury-deaths-in-the-us-by-gender-since-2003/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/187127/number-of-occupat...
- Hrnrurj 3y ago[flagged]
- TylerE 3y agoNot relevant. This is a bad faith line you're taking. Slavery was legal in the US 200 years ago. We don't factor slavery into minimum wage calculations. PS: Even though they were barred from combat duty, 543 American women employed by the US Armed Forces were killed during WW2 alone. Mostly nurses.
- Hrnrurj 3y ago[flagged]
- roughly 3y agoThat explanation is not held up by the article or the research cited in the article.
- nuancebydefault 3y agoIn fact what first comes to mind: no work, no commute, less car accidents. Are those accounted for in the study? Also, smokers who get unemployed, will smoke more, out of boredom. Just to say, I find the result of the study quite hard to believe.
- xyzwave 3y ago> Also, smokers who get unemployed, will smoke more, out of boredom. Unemployed smokers will have less disposable income, and may not be able to afford to smoke more.
- yen223 3y agoHow likely is it that smokers will smoke so much more during a recession, vs during a non-recession, that the effect shows up in nationwide mortality rates?
- roughly 3y agoThis has been known for some time now - the health benefits alone of decarbonization would pay for the cost: https://www.who.int/news/item/05-12-2018-health-benefits-far-outweigh-the-costs-of-meeting-climate-change-goals https://www.who.int/news/item/05-12-2018-health-benefits-far...
- exabrial 3y ago> The trope is that industrialising cities in Asia are smog-ridden I had to stop reading here. This isn't a trope. This is undeniable fact. I've seen it, lived it, breathed it, have pictures to show.
- diebeforei485 3y agoDepends where and when. China has largely fixed its air quality problems as of 2024.
- nikkwong 3y agoI’m in China right now and I can unequivocally tell you that this is not true. I can hardly see the sun and it’s not due to overcast weather.
- diebeforei485 3y agoIt depends where in China. Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Wuhan, Xi'an, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Dalian, are all doing well. There is more to the country than Beijing and Shanghai (even Shanghai is much improved).
- NickC25 3y agoThey did so for the Olympics by stopping a lot of polluters from operating. As soon as the games left town, the pollution came back.
- em-bee 3y agobeijing's air quality did not get worse after the olympics. (edited to clarify)
- PNewling 3y agoI decided just to google Beijing air quality and both results came back... Not so good. "Dangerous Any exposure to the air, even for a few minutes, can lead to serious health effects on everybody. Avoid outdoor activities." https://www.accuweather.com/en/cn/beijing/101924/air-quality-index/101924 https://www.accuweather.com/en/cn/beijing/101924/air-quality... "Very Unhealthy Health warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be affected." https://aqicn.org/city/beijing/ https://aqicn.org/city/beijing/ So not sure I fully believe that.
- ChuckMcM 3y agoThis link[1] takes you to the paper. From "external influences": We explore three main potential sources of positive external health effects from recessions suggested by prior literature: reductions in the spread of infectious disease (Adda 2016), increases in the quality of healthcare (Stevens et al. 2015), and reductions in pollution (Chay and Greenstone 2003; Heutel and Ruhm 2016). We find little support for a role for the first two classes of external effects, but evidence consistent with a quantitatively important role for recession-induced reductions in air pollution in explaining about 40 percent of the recession-induced mortality declines. They don't cover lower driving (fewer accidents), health care tied to employment (under reported health incidents), or work place accidents (deaths due to statistical risk in higher risk jobs like construction, mining, etc.) So no, not a particularly insightful study in my opinion. [1] https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2024/program/paper/TEE9A8Qt https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2024/program/paper/TEE9A8Q...
- redavni 3y agoI didn't read the entire paper, but I don't see lowered stress and lack of sleep mentioned anywhere. These would be the most obvious answers and should be addressed. https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Lives-vs-Livelihoodsv2.pdf https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Lives-vs...
- passwordoops 3y agoHow dare you ruin a good headline and "think piece" with critical thinking! /s
- yen223 3y ago> By contrast, motor vehicle accidents and liver disease each account for less than 2 percent of 2006 mortality, and so their contributions to the total recession-induced mortality decline are only 6.9 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively. The paper did briefly cover accidents. Didn't check the rest.
- spacecadet 3y agoMarketing content to sell unscientific books.
- imzadi 3y agoEhh... I suspect that the cleaner air is more a correlation than a causation. It seems like fewer accidents due to fewer drivers would be a more direct cause. The cleaner air is just a side effect. I didn't see any mention of accident rates in the article.
- yujian 3y agotl;dr - less work = less pollution = less likely old people dying
- ThinkBeat 3y agoYes, the climate wins with high unemployment. People lose their homes, become homeless, that saves a lot of energy. A home needs to be cooled, warmed, light, tv etc all that regular stuff. If society is lucky, the person will not be able to own a car either. Also doesn't waste energy on cooking, doest shower much. When a person is homeless, he contributes vastly less pollution. The homeless may be the people contributing the best effort to limit pollution. We could probably hit our targets for climate change by increasing the homeless population by several magnitudes.
- outime 3y agoAnd if people cease to procreate, it's even more advantageous!
- yen223 3y agoYou know this wasn't the conclusion the article drew, right?
- ornornor 3y agoThis is bad faith, by that token dead people also don’t produce any more CO2. This is not what the article says at all though. By that token, we can’t possibly do anything about climate change because surely that would mean living in caves and never taking a shower again. Or becoming homeless as you put it.