The impact of economic downturns on health and mortality

One the very first concerns social scientist had about population and development is perhaps the conditions workers had to endure in order to make the economic system develop. In that regard, the work of Engels “the condition of the working class in England in 1844” focused on arguing that deprived labour implied poor health. In addition, the works of Charles Booth and Sebohm Rowntree also showed that labour and access to health are important factors of poverty. This research aims at contributing to the general hypothesis that conditions of labour determine health status and that in turn these two factors shape poverty in urban areas. In order to achieve this goal, we make use of fifty two quarters of the Urban Employment National Survey, each containing about 300 thousand observations. In addition, information of causes of death from administrative records is added. With these two main sources of data we construct a panel for econometric testing. Making use of a number of definitions that capture a broader range of working conditions, where formal-informal job is the main axis of analysis we expect to find correlation between more informal precarious activities and more stress related illnesses or causes of death.

Objectives: This study creates a new model to predict the changing tendency of ageing population with disability, and gave some evidences on prevention and reduction of disability risk. Data & Methods: A cross-sectional data of Second China Sample Survey on Disability (2006) is used in this study. This study combines PDE model with the methods of static covariate-direct prediction, static covariate by type prediction and dynamic covariate effect prediction respectively. Results: The future total number and growth rate of older adults with disabilities in China are very striking. Under scenario II, about 1.5 million of older adults increase annually from 2006 to 2040, and more than 2.5 million increase annually from 2040 to 2050. Total number in 2050 is 3.05 times of 2006. And population ageing, sex, place of residence, marital status, education, income, provincial GDP per capita are significantly affect the prevalence of disability among the older adults. Conclusion： Social and economic factors affect the development process of future changes in size of population with disability, but the most far-reaching impact factor is population aging, so the health expectancy of the elderly population is most worthy of attention.