September 27, 2023 - 6:30pm
A new study predicts that Britain’s cost-of-living crisis will cause a sharp rise in mortality. The study has prompted various alarming headlines, such as one in the Guardian that refers to “thousands of premature deaths”. But a closer look suggests that its predictions are unlikely to materialise.
Elizabeth Richardson and colleagues use data from Scotland to model how inflation will affect real household incomes, and how this in turn will affect mortality. Yet one of their key assumptions is highly questionable. In particular, they assume that the effect of income on mortality is given by the cross-sectional relationship between the two variables.
What does this mean? When researchers calculate mortality rates for different income groups at a point in time, they find lower rates in the upper income groups. Richardson and colleagues are assuming this reflects a causal effect of income. Hence they predict that a fall in income of, say, £2,000 will increase mortality by the same amount as the difference in mortality between groups whose average incomes differ by £2,000.
But just because mortality rates are lower in the upper income groups, doesn’t mean higher average income is the cause. Perhaps being in good health leads people to earn a high income. Or perhaps the traits that predispose people to earn a high income also predispose them to live longer.
One way to find out whether income really does have a causal effect on mortality is to follow lottery winners. If they go on to live longer than people who played the lottery but did not win, it’s likely because the extra income caused them to live longer — since winning the lottery is determined by chance. David Cesarini and colleagues used this method in a 2016 study and found “no evidence that wealth impacts mortality”.
Zooming out to the macro-level, there’s no evidence that mortality tends to rise when living standards go down. Paradoxical as it may seem, mortality rates usually fall during economic recessions (though the relationship has become weaker over time).
We can check this for the 2008 financial crisis — when Scotland’s GDP contracted by 4% and the unemployment rate doubled. Looking at figures published by the Scottish government, we can see that the age-standardised mortality rate fell from 2007 to 2008, and then again from 2008 to 2009.
Even if Scotland does see a rise in mortality this year, it’s very unlikely to be as large as Richardson and colleagues predict. They claim that “real-terms income reductions could result in population-wide premature mortality increases of up to 6.4%”. Yet the increase due to Covid in 2020 was ‘only’ 7.4%. So what they’re saying is that the cost-of-living crisis will increase mortality by almost as much as the pandemic did — which I don’t find plausible.
Will the cost-of-living crisis lead to “thousands of premature deaths”? There are strong reasons to doubt Richardson and colleagues’ projections. Of course, this isn’t meant to downplay the crisis: inflation doesn’t have to kill you to be a serious problem.
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SubscribeWe are yet to see any sense of alarm raised on the account of consistently high excess mortality!
As long as I don’t die, why should I care?
The biggest cause of death is life – ban it!
Thanatos
Governments make decisions based on what they believe is in the best interests of various competing factors. (Saving taxpayers’ money being just one of them).
All Govt decisions will affect lives. That is a given.
But to leap from that to a point where you can say that their policies “Kill People” (which BBC talking heads have routinely been allowed to do without challenge) is simply not honest reporting.
For those who believe that line of hyper-partisan reasoning then let’s take their argument to its logical – and ludicrous – conclusion:
Labour killed people – they could have employed 1 million lollipop ladies to ensure everyone crossed the road safely. Their failure to act cost lives! The money they saved on lollipop ladies meant unnecessary deaths. The blood of every child run over on British roads is on the hands of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the rest of their murderous crew!
Do they not get how sensationalised and stupid that sounds? Yet making a similar argument about the Tories has the reflexively and unthinking anti-Tories nodding in assent and claiming it is quantifiable.
The findings of this latest “research” seems like a re-hashing of the Marmot report, which insisted that “The fall in life expectancy is proof that austerity kills … “. But given that there were similar small, statistically questionable, falls in life expectancy in the Netherlands, in France, in Spain, Portugal and Hungary and many more countries were those all due to Austerity policies as well? How do you explain it in countries that never saw Austerity?
How would you explain why there was no fall in life expectancy in Greece, a country that experienced ACTUAL austerity rather than the ever-increasing-public-spending version of Austerity we’ saw in the UK?
Would it not be better and more honest for the media to have made it plain that Sir Michael Marmot, the author of the report, is a long time Labour activist and supporter?
When a think-tank produces a report that is critical of Labour or supports a Tory policy, the BBC and Guardian will always flag up that they are “right leaning” or funded by The Right, or whatever qualifier they choose to use as a health-warning against readers believing the report unquestioningly. Yet when an academic or think-tank produces a report that supports the Left position it carries no such caveat.
As a point of journalistic principle and integrity, does that seem like a consistent position?
Do not appeal to “journalistic principle and integrity.” There is no such thing.
Garbage in, garbage out.
“the 2008 financial crisis … the age-standardised mortality rate fell from 2007 to 2008, and then again from 2008 to 2009.” – What makes anyone think that it only takes 1 year for the effects to ripple through? Maybe it takes 10 – or 30 – or maybe there is no connection at all?
Who’d have thought it, researchers make spurious claims about issues they can know almost nothing about
If it bleeds it leads – no matter how spurious the claim is.
If I won the lottery my life would shorten considerably I imagine, Keith Richards would have nothing on me if I had money (although he has made the age he has is one of life’s great mysteries)
He’s been clean for decades now, and he’s very much a family man – in private he has health, wealth and family, and the schtick is for the public.
The Left has been relying on wildly inflated harm predictions based on social “science” studies for decades. Without a completely on board press echoing their doomsaying at top volume, they’d never find their way to power.
Fear-mongering: something the right would never do.
The difference is that the right is talking about things that are really happening and that we definitely should be frightened by.
Hmm, I don’t know if it’s much of a right/left issue (though elements surely are) – I see it more as a serious centrist vs extreme/’gamer’ issue. For example many people calling out covid excesses, and wokery, are on the left – particularly those that are doing so effectively – not hysterically or manipulatively – (Bill Maher, Jonathan Haidt, Gad Saad, Jon McWhorter)
This so called study comes from an academic Department of Public Health. These people consider themselves to be literate statisticians, yet they make the cardinal error no statistician worth their salt would allow: namely failure to recognise that association is no proof of causality. Furthermore they overlook the fact that deprivation, which does have a clear link to suboptimal health and is known to be a predisposing factor for many life shortening conditions, does not wreak it’s toll of mortality immediately. The effect plays out over a protracted timescale over which many other related causal effects will undoubtedly play out. Thus loss of Quality Adjusted Life Years is a better end point as it reflects both mortality and morbidity over time.
The BMJ group of publications is overseen by an editorial team that is composed of fanatical Grauniad readers. It regularly parrots left wing perspectives at every opportunity, and will seize on any opportunity to paint a veneer of pseudo-scientific approval over any research that seeks to invalidate, the pharmaceutical industry, business activity, profits, and lower taxation.
This article is so flawed it should never have seen the light of day, as well as demonstrating why Public Health Specialists should keep out of economic policy. The causes of the decline of life expectancy are well documented, they are poor diet, lack of exercise, obesity, excess alcohol and the residual effects of smoking.
The actual BMJ paper Author refers to is much more nuanced than the headline. And it’s just a study in Scotland.
However you don’t need to be the proverbial Einstein to recognise a significant cut in real incomes for the poorest not likely to aid good health – physical or mental. The study notes the impact of inflation much greater for the poorest too, which we all know.
The study refers to mortality but intuitively one suspects morbidity perhaps even more adversely impacted.
None of this means the poorest individuals lose all agency in decision making, but who really thinks making our poorest even poorer, and disproportionately, a good idea for the health and well being of our Nation.
They’re going to issue a vax jab for it.
How about we just ignore these ‘studies’, especially ones that use so-called modeling? ‘Experts’ never have to be right about anything, they just carry on with their gaseous self-important drivel, and are then analyzed by ‘pundits’, another class of cultural parasite.
That’s too sweeping about ‘experts’, as you’ll prove the next time you see a dentist or get your laptop fixed. You should point the finger at the publishers, the journalists and the tv programmers, all of whom have incentives to misunderstand and exaggerate what actual experts are finding (usually with caveats), and no morals to prevent them doing so.
Thought it was obvious that I was talking about government officials, talking heads, academics and others of their nefarious ilk. The dentist and computer repairman examples you refer to might better be called ‘professionals’ i.e. people who are paid for actually having useful skills.
It has raised poverty exponentially for those legions of Britons who scarcely participate in online news media. But no, the UK is not the Ukraine and inflation won’t cause the level of death and destruction of the proxy war that started all these problems in the first place.
What about the claim that austerity cuts were causally responsible for a particular number of deaths
Oh right. That’s all right then.?
Lower food quality, lower heating, lower use of aircon.-> lower health
Less car maintenance causing accidents -> more deah
The cost of living crisis WILL cause thousands of early deaths
“They claim that ‘real-terms income reductions could result in population-wide premature mortality increases of up to 6.4%’. Yet the increase due to Covid in 2020 was ‘only’ 7.4%.”
And compared to premature mortality increases witnessed by life insurance companies following the mass covid ‘vaccine’ experiment?