In this paper we study the effect of the business cycle on the mortality rate of the major racial groups in the U.S. Using county-level data from 1999 to 2005, we find that the unemployment rate is negatively related to mortality for whites and latinos but that there is not a statistically...

This paper employs U.S. metropolitan data to investigate the relationship between mortality rate and the business cycle. We utilize mortality and employment data that are specific to a given city, year and race/ethnic group. The analysis improves upon the existing literature by analyzing the...