We find that shocks to unemployment are followed by statistically significant increases in mortality rates and declines in life expectancy. We use our results to assess the long-run effects of the COVID-19 economic recession on mortality and life expectancy. We estimate the size of the COVID-19-related unemployment to be between 2 and 5 times larger than the typical unemployment shock, depending on race/gender, resulting in a 3.0% increase in mortality rate and a 0.5% drop in life expectancy over the next 15 years for the overall American population. We also predict that the shock will disproportionately affect African-Americans and women, over a short horizon, while white men might suffer large consequences over longer horizons. These figures translate in [to] a staggering 0.89 million additional deaths over the next 15 years.
This is from Francesco Bianchi, Giada Bianchi, and Dongho Song, “The Long-Term Impact of the COVID-19 Unemployment Shock on Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates,” NBER Working Paper No. 28304, December 2020.
An excerpt:
For the overall population, the increase in the death rate following the COVID-19 pandemic implies a staggering 0.89 and 1.37 million excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively. These numbers correspond to 0.24% and 0.37% of the projected US population at the 15- and 20-year horizons, respectively. For African- Americans, we estimate 180 thousand and 270 thousand excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively. These numbers correspond to 0.34% and 0.49% of the projected African- American population at the 15- and 20-year horizons, respectively. For Whites, we estimate 0.82 and 1.21 million excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively. These numbers correspond to 0.30% and 0.44% of the projected White population at the 15- and 20-year horizons, respectively. These numbers are roughly equally split between men and women.
Francesco Bianchi is an economist at Duke University, Giada Bianchi is an MD in the Division of Hematology, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Harvard Medical School, and Dongho Song is an economist at the Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School.
The authors write:
We interpret these results as a strong indication that policymakers should take into consideration the severe, long-run implications of such a large economic recession on people’s lives when deliberating on COVID-19 recovery and containment measures. Without any doubt, lockdowns save lives, but they also contribute to the decline in real activity that can have severe consequences on health.
I’m not sure why they are confident that there is zero doubt that lockdowns save lives. They admit in the last quoted sentence above that lockdowns “contribute to the decline in real activity that can have severe consequences on health.” What if lockdowns are responsible for half of the bad unemployment consequences, and voluntary actions in response to the fear of getting the virus are responsible for the other half? Then, assuming a linear relationship between unemployment and fatalities, the lockdowns would be responsible for half of 0.89 million to 1.37 million deaths, which translates to between 450,000 deaths and 685,000 deaths. Can they really be confident that lockdowns saved at least 450,000 lives?
READER COMMENTS
Dylan
Jan 5 2021 at 4:43pm
Dylan
Jan 5 2021 at 4:44pm
Sorry about not closing the quote properly. 1st paragraph is the quote, 2nd is my response.
David Henderson
Jan 5 2021 at 5:53pm
No problem with quote. I understood.
Yes, they could have meant what you say, but the point is important enough that they should have made it clear.
Dylan
Jan 5 2021 at 6:20pm
I read this as more of a “to be sure…” Meaning it comes across almost as a rhetorical device, where the authors are granting that there is a benefit to lockdowns but that it needs to be measured against the full costs (many of which are unseen).
Of course, the benefits are also hard to judge as you say. It’s difficult to estimate how many lives were saved because of changes in behavior, and more difficult still when you try to break it down between “voluntary” changes and government mandated ones.
One of the things I’ve personally found frustrating reading people on this issue is that a certain type of person says that the deaths wouldn’t have been higher without government lockdowns, because people were voluntarily isolating anyway…but then they go ahead and implicitly or explicitly blame the bulk of the economic slowdown on the government action instead of the pandemic. Then the other side makes the exact opposite claim, deaths would have soared without government lockdowns…and they aren’t really costing us anything because people were already not going to work, restaurants, etc…
In my mind, it seems that government lockdowns are impacting both economic activity and deaths on the margin, but it isn’t obvious which effect is bigger.
jj
Jan 6 2021 at 12:54pm
I agree — they should have said “lockdowns reduce COVID deaths”. To say they “save lives” implies a net saving.
Dylan
Jan 5 2021 at 5:02pm
David,
A question for you only slightly related to this post. We’re into 2021 and are above 350,000 deaths, with the rolling 7-day daily death toll approaching 3000 and still climbing. Back in March you posted about thinking you might lose your bet on whether the total deaths in the U.S. would be over 100,000 by the end of the year. Knowing what you know now, has your thinking on the pandemic and the appropriate response (whether by individuals, business, or government) evolved?
David Henderson
Jan 5 2021 at 5:56pm
Yes, the pandemic is worse than I thought it would be.
When I was trying to get two friends to take it seriously in March, I said that it could easily kill over 300,000 U.S. residents. But in my gut, I thought the total deaths would be under 400,000. I’m no longer confident about that.
My thinking about the appropriate response has not evolved much. I favored masking; I still do. I favored deregulating so that the vaccine would come on line much sooner than it did; that’s still a good call. I favored government giving good information rather than crappy information; I still do. I opposed lockdowns; I still do.
Dylan
Jan 5 2021 at 6:31pm
Thanks for the response. I’d hope you’re no longer confident about the under 400,000 deaths, since it seems likely we will get there in a matter of weeks.
On the rest, I think we’re pretty much in agreement on the broad points. I don’t favor mandated lockdowns on liberty grounds (which is not an argument I make often), particularly fear over what this kind of government power means for the post-pandemic future. However, I’m unsure if the utilitarian calculus in the short-term is as clear.
Thomas Hutcheson
Jan 6 2021 at 5:11am
Would you consider an amendment, “I favor good regulations reducing social and commercial interactions (“lockdowns”) rather than crappy “lockdowns?”
Should you have not supported massive testing of the asymptomatic along the lines of Romer and Tabarrok?
Did you mean by “deregulation” of vaccine development human challenge trials?
Thomas Hutcheson
Jan 5 2021 at 5:47pm
I’ve seen estimates of more like 90 percent of the decline in quantity of output due to fall in demand and only 10 % due to firms not being able to operate or operate at capacity. Of course even 10% of .89-1.37 million deaths is horrendous. How may of those could have been prevented with an optimal policy response compared to the actual response and what WAS that optimal response. [I suspect a large part of that would have been the kind of testing program advocated by Romer an d Tabarrok and accelerated vaccine development with human challenge trials.]
The higher portion of fall in output bein due to demand, means a greater responsibility of the Fed for allowing inflation expectations to collapse at a time when they were still below target.
Alan Goldhammer
Jan 6 2021 at 9:34am
The problem from the outset and the one that still exists today is overcrowding of hospitals with COVID-19 patients. To be sure, treatment regimens have improved in some respects but are underutilized in others. Social/physical distancing and mask wearing are still not applied or adopted (depending on whether you are a Libertarian or Utilitarian) and this leads to increasing infections. One of our local hardware stores sent me an email on Monday afternoon saying they are closing one of their stores because of a COVID-19 outbreak in the staff (12 people reported in sick). I was there briefly last Wednesday but left quickly as the item I was looking for was not in stock. The store is small and the aisles are narrow, this is the kind of place to avoid if there are a lot of people and being winter, there is a dry atmosphere and not much fresh air blowing through the store.
Following the reopening last Spring, many stores had restricted the number of patrons to control crowding. This approach which is warranted as a public health measure has largely been eliminated.
California is a basket case now and in LA, there is a lack of oxygen for hospitalized patients. Arizona, after a big summer outbreak, is seeing a surge in cases again. We are now seeing the fallout from all the holiday travel.
There is no question that lockdowns work, but they do impose a economic penalty. Unfortunately, given a societal ignorance of prudent public health what other response if there?
The one major benefit I have seen is that my wife will soon qualify for a barber’s license from the State of Maryland.
Mark Brophy
Jan 6 2021 at 3:08pm
It’s completely opposite where I live in Colorado. Only 11% of the beds are used for Covid patients and hospitals are begging for business.
robc
Jan 6 2021 at 3:37pm
Without CON laws, there would be more capacity in lots of states.
David Henderson
Jan 6 2021 at 7:13pm
Good point, robc.
Andjuar Cedeno
Jan 6 2021 at 11:48am
What about the facts uncovered by Genevieve Briand at Johns Hopkins that
“…the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.” This is true because “…the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19.” The other causes are heart disease, cancers, chronic respiratory disease, cebevrovascular, alsheimer, diabetes, flu and pneumonia, nephritis, and septicemia.
“The CDC classiĆed all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why
COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a signiĆcant decrease.”
With this evidence there is no doubt whatsoever that they “cure” of the lockdowns far exceeds the effects of COVID-19.
The Johns Hopkins webinar is called “COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data.”
Dylan
Jan 6 2021 at 1:40pm
You should take a look at the retraction by the student newspaper that published this originally
https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19
Andjuar Cedeno
Jan 8 2021 at 3:31am
Yes, I’ve read the retraction by the News-Letter. Have you read the retraction?
You should watch the presentation itself, if YouTube in its infinite respect for free speech and rigorous inquiry does not pull down the video. I verified it was still up while typing this post.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TKJN61aflI&ab_channel=JHUAdvancedAcademicPrograms
Please let me know what part of her research you question and on what grounds.
Tom DeMeo
Jan 7 2021 at 9:54am
You have never made an economic case that lockdowns have any net impact at all. They may very well improve economic freedom on net.
Having hundreds of thousands of people die has an impact on economic behavior. Economic freedom causes social interactions, which then causes infections. The lockdowns are more the effect than the cause of depressed economic activity due to the virus. Take the lockdowns away, and the infections will only rise more quickly. The resulting emergent behavior will depress the economy all the same.
We have no way for sure to say whether government imposed lockdowns on net result in more or less economic freedom, but given that we are heading into a long winter stretch punctuated by holiday socializing, it seems that the value of up front discipline is obvious.
Jon Murphy
Jan 7 2021 at 10:48am
If this is the case, then the lockdowns must necessarily have no benefit on economic freedom. At best, they have no effect.
If economic activity is depressed due to the virus, then people are not socializing and lockdowns are having no effect. Indeed, there is no need for them. If the lockdowns are needed to prevent socializing, then they are a cause of depressed economic activity.
Jon Murphy
Jan 7 2021 at 10:50am
But, my immediately prior point aside, part of the point is that the lockdowns are causing net deaths as well. And, especially among the young, greater than the virus.
David Henderson
Jan 7 2021 at 1:05pm
I think you and I have a different view of the meaning of the term “economic freedom.”
Comments are closed.