Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Recessions and Sexually Transmitted Infections

A piece in today's Irish Times covers the issue of whether STI's might decline during a recession. We have talked a lot about this type of work on the blog including the Ruhm work indicating that acute health indicators improve during recessions. Certainly, friday and saturday nights (to the extent that I am actually out-and-about) seem quieter in Dublin. I am aware that one of our students is looking at this issue in a broad sense supervised by Kevin. Would be interesting to do a brief tracking study for the last 18 month in Ireland of key acute health indicators.

link here

1 comment:

Kevin Denny said...

Actually I am not sure that I am...Presumably at least some forms of sexual activity are positively correlated with economic activity & not just prostitution. Although one could have substitution effects working in the opposite direction ("lets stay in tonight, honey") my guess (& thats all it is) is that income effects dominate.
If STI's are countercyclical it may also be about attitude to risk. Higher moments of the distribution are harder to model but more fun.