Income level is a well-known risk factor for mortality among working-aged adults. Job loss and unemployment are also often correlated with increased risk of death. Very little research has investigated income drops, a plausible mediator of a causal effect of unemployment on health, and its association with mortality.
In this presentation, Institute for Work & Health Research Associate Jacob Etches will discuss a study that is using tax and survey data to investigate the effect of income level and income drops in Canada and the United States, as well as the induction times for the effects of income level and income drops. The difficulty of establishing the direction of causality for correlations between these exposures and mortality will also be discussed.