The Impact of the Great Recession on Mortality: A Dynamic Factor Analysis

LinkedIn

Facebook

Bluesky

Threads

Email

Link

Working Paper 35914

DOI 10.3386/w35914

Issue Date October 2026

We use a dynamic factor time series model to estimate the national mortality impact of the Great Recession. In aggregate, the Great Recession reduced the average annual, age-adjusted mortality rate by about 2 percent, with effects persisting for at least a decade. In a calibrated model of the welfare effects of the estimated impacts of the Great Recession on consumption and mortality, we find that the welfare gain from the estimated mortality decline is quantitatively significant relative to the welfare loss from the estimated consumption decline. The estimated mortality decline is also quantitatively close to prior mortality estimates using cross-sectional variation in the severity of the Great Recession, implying limited general equilibrium effects of the Great Recession on mortality. More broadly, our findings suggest that prior evidence from local labor markets that recessions are good for health can be extrapolated to the likely mortality consequences of nationwide recessions.

We are grateful to Thorsten Drautzburg, Pablo Guerron-Quintana, Anil Kashyap, Tim Moore, and Christian Wolf for helpful comments. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In addition to working papers, the NBER disseminates affiliates’ latest findings through a range of free periodicals—the NBER Reporter, the NBER Digest, the Bulletin on Health, the Bulletin on the Economics of Alzheimer's, and the Bulletin on Entrepreneurship—as well as research spotlights, lectures, and panel videos.