The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that
more than 40 percent of America’s unemployed have been out of
work for six months or more. The Associated Press reported
recently that the long-term unemployed are facing increased
hiring bias, with employers refusing to take on workers who have
been out of work for a longer stretch of time. There are several
deleterious effects of long-term unemployment, but the New York
Times’ Binyamin Applebaum highlighted a particularly harrowing
one — increased mortality rates. According to a study by
Columbia’s Till von Wachter and the Chicago Federal Reserve’s
Daniel Sullivan, long-term unemployment can knock up to 18
months off of life expectancy: Mortality rates in the year after
displacement are 50%–100% higher than would otherwise have been
expected. The effect on mortality hazards declines sharply over
time, but even twenty years after displacement, we estimate a
10%–15% increase in annual death hazards. If such increases were
sustained indefinitely, t