The Effect of the Great Recession on Italian Life Expectancy

Abstract

The 2008 economic crisis, also called the Great Recession, produced only a moderate rise in unemployment in Italy, but the consequences for public debt management were far more serious. Italy makes for a good case study for evaluating the effect on life expectancy at birth of the cost containment program in the health care system, implemented after the crisis began. To this end we employed the Artificial Control method using the data from the Human Mortality Database to assess the causal effect of the 2008 economic crisis on the subsequent evolution of life expectancy at birth (until 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic). Our analysis identifies a significant deceleration in the progression of Italian life expectancy. Ten years after the onset of the crisis, Italy appears to have lost almost 1 year of life expectancy with respect to what would have been expected had the crisis never happened.

Challenges to Global Health Emerging from the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…There is no clear estimate as to when and to what extent the new economic crisis might become out of control and overwhelm the world, such as the previous crisis from 2008 onwards [47,48]. Support to LMICs in any global crisis would be essential to at least maintain the levels of research [49] and support to healthcare as it stands today.…”