Does the current economic crisis require the deep cuts in public spending announced in the June 2010 emergency budget, with potential implications for public health? The arguments for and against such cuts in response to economic recession are complex, but if public health professionals are to engage in debates about future public spending, they should be informed by relevant evidence. In this ...

BACKGROUND Limited research is focused on suicides in children aged below 15 years. AIMS To analyse worldwide suicide rates in children aged 10-14 years in two decades: 1990-1999 and 2000-2009. METHOD Suicide data for 81 countries or territories were retrieved from the World Health Organization Mortality Database, and population data from the World Bank data-set. RESULTS In the past two d...

Health Sector Reform and Social Determinants of Health are central issues for the current international policy debate, considering the turbulent scenario and the threat of economic recession in a global scale. Although these themes have been discussed for a long time, three major issues still calls the attention of the scientific community and health policymakers. The first one is the matter of...

In the wake of a global economic recession, increased attention is being placed on societal transformations that lead to sustainable development, defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs” (Brundtland Commission, 1987). Sustainability addresses three overlapping and interdependent domains of development...

During the last few years, companies have had an increasing interest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and its implications in economic performance and competitive environment. However, as a result of the recent economic decline, CSR and the overall attitude of companies towards socially responsible activities have been affected. This article discusses the shift in the perception of CSR ...

The expected decline of health indicators with economic recessions and improvement with economic growth in the nineteenth century Sweden was reversed in the twentieth century, giving the counterintuitive pattern of higher mortality and lower life expectancy in economic expansions and improvement of these indices in recessions. The change or "tipping point" occurred at the end of the nineteenth ...

Declining production from conventional oil resources has initiated a global transition to unconventional oil, such as tar sands. Unconventional oil is generally harder to extract than conventional oil and is expected to have a (much) lower energy return on (energy) investment (EROI). Recently, there has been a surge in publications estimating the EROI of a number of different sources of oil, an...

OBJECTIVE The present study examined the association between unemployment and household food insecurity during the 2007-2009 economic recession in the USA. DESIGN Longitudinal survey of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP; 2008-2011). Food insecurity was measured by five questions excerpted from an eighteen-item Food Security Scale. Unemployment was measured by a dichotomous ...

BACKGROUND Longitudinal time-activity data are important for exposure modeling, since the extent to which short-term time-activity data represent long-term activity patterns is not well understood. This study was designed to evaluate longitudinal variations in human time-activity patterns. METHOD We report on 24-hour recall diaries and questionnaires collected via the internet from 151 parent...

How do economic recessions influence attitudes toward redistribution of wealth? From a traditional economic self-interest perspective, attitudes toward redistribution should be affected by one's financial standing. A functional evolutionary approach suggests another possible form of self-interest: That during periods of economic threat, attitudes toward redistribution should be influenced by on...