Influence of Health Care Expenditures, GDP, Employment and Globalization on Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: Potential Implications for the Current Recession
M. Harvey Brenner

Abstract
The current business climate, including recession, and continuing globalization involving industrial restructuring, prompt concern about effects in the US of this combined threat to cardiovascular (CVD) illness – the largest source of industrialized country mortality. Individual level studies have linked limited health care access, lower socio-economic status and job loss to higher CVD mortality. It is essential to determine whether these findings prevail at the national level? If so, then CVD mortality rates will worsen as a result of economic loss, involving employment and GDP reductions, combined with business restructuring. Time-series analysis shows that health expenditures, labor force participation, and GDP per capita, tend to decrease CVD mortality, controlling for consumption risk factors. Employment rates are negatively related to CVD mortality over 1979-2006. Clearly, economic policy, as it influences business conditions, macroeconomic policy and health care financing, plays a major role in the nation’s health.

Full Text: PDF