Gestor bibliográfico Crisis y Salud

2 years ago, we published a paper in The Lancet reviewing the mortality experience of 26 European countries during economic crises over three decades.1 We showed how increases in unemployment had been associated with increased suicides among people younger than 65 years and with fewer road-traffic fatalities (reflecting lower car use). On the basis of our analyses, we predicted that the economic crisis that began in summer, 2008, would have similar consequences. To what extent have our predictions been fulfilled? We can now offer a preliminary assessment based on data on mortality in several European countries for 2009. We extracted mortality rate data by age-group and cause from the WHO European Health for All database,2 and adult unemployment trends from EUROSTAT.3 Unfortunately, complete data for the period 2000–09 are currently only available for 10 of the 27 European Union (EU) countries: six in the pre-2004 EU (Austria, Finland, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the UK) and four in the post-2004 EU (Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, and Romania). We combined data from countries in each group, weighted by population size.