Comments on: Income is Healthy, Not Earning, Spending It

By: Overcoming Bias : Why Boom Times Kill

Overcoming Bias : Why Boom Times Kill — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:30:37 +0000

[...] seems that the puzzle of why death rates rise in good economic times is nearly solved. There’s an effect of [...]

By: Douglas Knight

Douglas Knight — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:51:20 +0000

An explanation for within-cycle mortality is that deaths are fraudulently postponed. Also, people expecting death may hold on for the sake of their heirs (this makes more sense for SS than for paychecks).

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:43:13 +0000

I notice that my posts where I pose puzzles get a lot less comments than posts that make claims.

By: tom

tom — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:58:49 +0000

This paper is just like your discussions about men vs. women: you can look at numbers, or you can listen to hip-hop:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBRhW8i8l7k

It has a Wikipedia page:

By: Michael Turner

Michael Turner — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:32:33 +0000

Actually, heavy drinking has been implicated in triggering both heart attacks and strokes. So payday binges might be the major factor here, with acquired chronic alcoholism and drug binging during boom times running second.

But we should probably look at economic bubbles, too. Chasing a dream can be very stressful, finding out you’ve only chased a mirage even more so. People who work too hard often end up playing too hard to compensate, but just the work itself (and the disappointment in losing out on the Ponzi Scheme, as most participants do, and consequent unemployment, losing health coverage, neglecting ailments because of that) might be culprit enough.

Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith has done econ lab work suggesting that a better (and freer, and more transparent) regulatory arrangement for forward markets would tend to smooth out bubbles and significantly mute “animal spirits”. In a fascinating and wide ranging interview , he bemoaned the fact that it would take a “policy entrepreneur” to get such policy enacted.

Well, we’ve got lots of policy entrepreneurship around health care right now, and there’s probably more to come. At the same time, economists are moaning that regulatory reform seems to be stalled. Maybe it’s time to establish some linkage: both bubbles and their catastrophic aftermaths are hazardous to your health, smoothing them out would not only make people wealthier in the long run, but healthier. Using markets to smooth out markets is also good public health policy, not just economic management. What’s not to like?

Chances of it happening? Well, wish on a star, baby. But at the very least, maybe insurance companies will start offering better rates to people who sign up for salary payment plans that pay out much more incrementally – or even just for those who take their pay packet on a Monday, rather than a Friday with everyone else.

By: loqi

loqi — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:21:59 +0000

Assuming alcohol is the primary culprit, I wouldn’t expect the date of consumption to correlate so nicely with the mortality spike unless a large portion of the alcohol-related fatalities in question take the form of sudden accidents (e.g., drunk driving). The other detrimental effects of drinking are slow and cumulative, so I would expect them to be more uniformly distributed.

By: Bob Knaus

Bob Knaus — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:57:33 +0000

“Spending money like a drunken sailor” in the old phrase, which describes men on liberty with a pocket full of payday the world over.

I’m guessing it’s the drinking and not the spending which is detrimental to one’s health!