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. 2021 Apr 22:9:678213.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.678213. eCollection 2021.

How Do Economic Fluctuations Affect the Mortality of Infectious Diseases?

Ting-Ting Sun  1 , Ran Tao  2 , Chi-Wei Su  1 , Muhammad Umar  1
Affiliations

How Do Economic Fluctuations Affect the Mortality of Infectious Diseases?

Ting-Ting Sun et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

This paper uses the mixed frequency vector autoregression model to explore the impact of economic fluctuations on infectious diseases mortality (IDM) from China perspective. We find that quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) fluctuations have a negative impact on the annual IDM, indicating that the mortality of infectious diseases varies counter-cyclically with the business cycle in China. Specifically, IDM usually increases with deterioration in economic conditions, and vice versa. The empirical results are consistent with the hypothesis I derived from the theoretical analysis, which highlights that economic fluctuations can negatively affect the mortality of infectious diseases. The findings can offer revelations for the government to consider the role of economic conditions in controlling the epidemic of infectious diseases. Policymakers should adopt appropriate and effective strategies to mitigate the potential negative effects of macroeconomic downturns on the mortality of infectious diseases. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, these analyses further emphasize the importance of promoting economic growth, increasing public health expenditure, and preventing and controlling foreign infectious diseases.

Keywords: China; counter-cyclically; economic fluctuations; infectious diseases mortality; mixed frequency vector autoregression model.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The change trends of GDPi, IDM and CDC. This figure presents the growth rates of GDP1, GDP2, GDP3, GDP4, IDM, and CDC from 1992 to 2019.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Impulse response functions of LF-VAR (4).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Impulse response functions based on MF-VAR (4).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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