Evidence map›Paper›PMID 25063518›Full record

ReviewInternational journal for equity in health2014

The impact of economic crises on social inequalities in health: what do we know so far?

Amaia Bacigalupe, Antonio Escolar-Pujolar

Abstract readEditorialReview
In one paragraph

Review in International journal for equity in health, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
34citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

34 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. The Role of Race in Deaths of Despair in Brazil: Is it a White People Problem?Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2025
    Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. The Association between Material Deprivation and Avoidable Mortality in Lisbon, Portugal.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020
    Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Using Birth Cohort Data to Assess the Impact of the UK 2008-2010 Economic Recession on Smoking During Pregnancy.Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco · 2019
    Article
  13. The Great Recession, financial strain and self-assessed health in Ireland.The European journal of health economics : HEPAC : health economics in prevention and care · 2019
    Article
  14. The effects of the economic recession on spending on private health insurance in Spain.International journal of health economics and management · 2019
    Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Observational
  20. Trends in health inequalities in 27 European countries.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Amaia BacigalupeDepartment of Sociology 2, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Leioa, Spain. amaia.bacigalupe@ehu.es.
Antonio Escolar-Pujolar

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Since 2008, Western countries are going through a deep economic crisis whose health impacts seem to be fundamentally counter-cyclical: when economic conditions worsen, so does health, and mortality tends to rise. While a growing number of studies have presented evidence on the effect of crises on the average population health, a largely neglected aspect of research is the impact of crises and the related political responses on social inequalities in health, even if the negative consequences of the crises are primarily borne by the most disadvantaged populations. This commentary will reflect on the results of the studies that have analyzed the effect of economic crises on social inequalities in health up to 2013. With some exceptions, the studies show an increase in health inequalities during crises, especially during the Southeast Asian and Japanese crises and the Soviet Union crisis, although it is not always evident for both sexes or all health or socioeconomic variables. In the Nordic countries during the nineties, a clear worsening of health equity did not occur. Results about the impacts of the current economic recession on health equity are still inconsistent. Some of the factors that could explain this variability in results are the role of welfare state policies, the diversity of time periods used in the analyses, the heterogeneity of socioeconomic and health variables considered, the changes in the socioeconomic profile of the groups under comparison in times of crises, and the type of measures used to analyze the magnitude of social inequalities in health. Social epidemiology should further collaborate with other disciplines to help produce more accurate and useful evidence about the relationship between crises and health equity.

Indexed as

Economic RecessionHealth Status DisparitiesDeveloped CountriesHealth PolicyHumansSocial WelfareSocioeconomic Factors

Identifiers

PMID25063518
PMCPMC4134120

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.