IANS
London, Jul 8: Market crashes are likely to fuel more homicides and suicides, unless governments invest in labour market protections, according to a new study.
Researchers at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Oxford University estimated that soaring stress brought on by job losses could prompt a 2.4 rise in suicide rates in people under 64 years of age.
Similarly, they estimated a 2.7 percent rise in heart attack deaths in men between 30 and 44 years, and a 2.4 percent rise in homicide rates, corresponding to thousands of deaths in European Union countries.
Martin McKee, professor at the LSHTM and study co-author, noted that "suicides are just the tip of the iceberg - rising suicide rates are a sign of many failed suicide attempts and high levels of mental distress among workers and families".
Government spending to keep people in employment and quickly get them back to work when they lose jobs could prevent these rises in deaths from occurring, the study says.
When spending on such "active labour market programmes" is above $190 per person, a financial crisis would not be a major killer.
The report also suggests that in poor countries, where investments in active labour market programmes are much lower or virtually non-existent, the death toll brought on by the financial meltdown would be much worse.
The researchers studied mortality rates for over 30 causes of death from the World Health Organisation's database between the years 1970 and 2007.
They then compared the results to unemployment data from the International Labour Organisation, and data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development describing different types of government social programme expenditures during the same period.
In Britain, where currently about $150 per head per year is spent on active labour market programmes, researchers estimated that at least 25 to 290 suicides would occur as a direct result of the financial crisis, said a LSHTM release.
The report was published in the Wednesday issue of The Lancet.