research funded by the national institute for health research and published in 2015 identified austerity as one of the factors responsible for a rise in suicide attempts and suicide deaths since 2008, particularly in regard to jobcentre policies. in 2017, the royal society of medicine said that government austerity decisions in health and social care were likely to have resulted in 30,000 deaths in england and wales in 2015. research by university college london published in bmj open in 2017 compared the figures for health and social care funding during the 2000s with that during the period 2010–2014. it found that annual growth in health funding during the 2000s was 3.8%, but after 2010 this dropped to 0.41%. annual growth in social care funding of 2.2% during the 2000s became an annual decrease of 1.57% after 2010. this coincided with mortality rates decreasing by 0.77% annually during the 2000s but rising by 0.87% annually after 2010.