Washington:
High unemployment during recession may not be bad for health as thought before, with a new study finding that the life expectancy of Americans rose by 6.2 years during the Great Depression of 1930's.
The University of Michigan study published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says that life expectancy rose from 57.1 in 1929 to 63.3 years in 1932.
The increase occurred for both men and women, and for whites and non-whites, Science Daily reports.
"The finding is strong and counterintuitive," Tapia Granados, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR), was quoted as saying by the Daily.
The findings are contrary to what most people think that periods of high unemployment during recession are harmful to health.
The researchers used historical life expectancy and mortality data to examine associations between economic growth and population health for 1920 to 1940.
They found that while population health improved during the four years of the Great Depression and during recessions in 1921 and 1938, mortality increased and life expectancy declined during periods of strong economic expansion, such as 1923, 1926, 1929, and 1936-1937, the Daily reported.