Lean times of recession help make us healthier?

Mum found this interesting article in the Weekend Australian (11-12 Oct 08 - page 5). It has been referenced from The Times.

You can read in on the internet here.

Or you can read the text below.

THE Western world is braced for a global recession to wash away all vestiges of the good life people have become accustomed to, but downturns don't bring unmitigated woe.

During the past 10 years of economic growth, a small group of US economists and psychologists has been trying to work out whether people really are better off in a boom.
Their answer is that recessions, rather than booms or depressions, might be a blessing. People tend to drink less, smoke fewer cigarettes and lose weight. They enrol in higher education, the air is cleaner, the roads are less crowded.

Research by Stanford University and the University of North Carolina shows that when times are good people of all classes tend not to take care of themselves and their families.
The better-off may have gym memberships but all classes drink too much, eat more fat-laden food and are more likely to neglect their families.

In downturns, people have more time to visit their elderly relatives and are more likely to look after their children themselves rather than booking them into after-school activities and childcare.
Grant Miller, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford, said that in a boom people worked longer, harder hours to take advantage of the conditions and were more stressed and less likely to do things that were good for them. "Cooking at home and exercising are seen as a waste of time," he said.

When wages drop, and jobs are scarce, the young feel it makes more sense to prolong their education, and those who can afford to retire do so, as there's less incentive to keep earning.

In his paper Healthy Living in Hard Times, Christopher Ruhm, UNC professor of economics, suggests that in the US during the recession in the 1990s, smoking, particularly among heavy users, declined by 5 per cent.
Ralph Catalano, professor of public health at the University of California, Berkeley, believes that it is an oversimplification to say that recessions are good for people, but he thinks they do encourage healthier lifestyles.
"People who are worried about losing their jobs do things that keep them from getting laid off - they drink less and take fewer risks," he said.

But at least the boom made people happy? That's not entirely true.
According to Britain's Office for National Statistics, levels of contentment have remained the same, at about 87 per cent, for the past 10 years.

What do you think?