Long-Term Effects of Severe Economic Recessions on Male BMI Trajectories and Health Behaviors

With periodic recessions and rising costs of health care, it is important to know how severe economic recessions can affect health outcomes. This study’s goal is to establish a causal relationship between job loss and health across the life cycle. We use a unique data set from Ukraine to examine the long-term effects from past labor market shocksdefined as job separations due to business closures, reorganizations, bankruptcies, or privatizationon BMI, smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical activity. This study contributes to the literature on the health consequences of job loss by identifying the effects from exogenous job separations, modeling these effects across the life cycle, and examining concurrent health-compromising and health-promoting behaviors. Applying growth-curve models, we show that past exogenous labor market shocks increase average BMI at young ages and alter the BMI-age trajectory’s shape. Moreover, we found that effects from job separations on health operate through health-compromising behaviors.