I've now read this paper by a "professor of risk management" at the University of Bristol. Some thoughts.
He assumes that recession, if sufficiently deep and prolonged, necessarily means reduced life expectancy. He uses as his evidence recent ONS statistics showing declining life expectancy growth since 2010, flatlining since 2014, and now falling LE at birth for the poorest women.
But the consensus view among those who have studied this phenomenon, notably the estimable Sir Michael Marmot, is that it is not the 2008-9 recession that caused LE growth to slow, but the measures subsequently enacted to reduce the public deficit.
The policy decision at the time was to cut back government spending hard in the wake of the most severe recession in the 1930s, with cuts particularly targeted at vulnerable groups. It was inevitable that this would cause suffering and premature death.
Pro-cyclical austerity has been known since the 1930s to be wrong. But in 2010, the Greek crisis and a foolish and flawed academic paper gave impetus to those who claimed government spending must be harshly cut back.
This is the lesson of 2010. We now face a far deeper recession than in 2008-9. We must not make the mistake of imposing austerity to reduce public deficits again. And nor should we end restrictions early to protect public finances. These would be terrible mistakes.
*since* the 1930s
