Notes On Auschwterity

Don’t ask me how to pronounce that, the idea is all.

These are rough notes for a possible Empirical OHP section series on why, “unemployment today is a real cost to society that exceeds the real costs of all wars in human history.”

For now I have to quote that, since I’ve said, heard, read, and written it before, but have not myself punched in the quantitative numbers to see just how much the costs of unemployment exceed the costs of war.

First let’s note some academic studies. Th=is list is not exhaustive, nor even definitive.

• Berman (2025) – see below for a longer quote and comment.
• Broadbent et al (2024) — “Austerity policies are consistently associated with adverse mortality outcomes, but the magnitude of this effect remains uncertain and may depend on how austerity is implemented…” | A flaw in this is that it looked only at trends, and only one measure. Trneds should tail-off thoiugh as properity rises.
• Forster (2020) — “We find that structural adjustment reforms lower health system access and increase neonatal mortality. Additional analyses show that labor market reforms drive these deleterious effects. Overall, our evidence suggests that structural adjustment programs endanger the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals in developing countries.” | Clear enough, but I have not synthesized their numbers.
• Rachiotis (2015) — impact of the Greek crisis.
• Toffolutti, (2019) — “Austerity is associated with an increase in all-cause mortality. Fiscal stimuli increase mortality due to cirrhosis and vehicle-accidents. The results are sensitive to the set of countries examined.”

There are some relevant books:

• Stuckler and Basu, 2013, “The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills” ,
• Mattei, 2022, “The Capital Order: How economists invented austerity and paved the way to fascism”

Berman (2025) and Rachiotis (2015)

The Berman (2025) abstract notes, " Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we estimate the effect of cuts to welfare benefits and changes in health expenditure on life expectancy and mortality rates. Our findings indicate that these austerity measures reduced life expectancy by 2.5 to 5 months by 2019. Women were nearly twice as affected as men. The primary driver of this trend is cuts to welfare benefits, although healthcare spending changes have a larger effect per pound spent. The results suggest that austerity policies caused a three-year setback in life expectancy progress between 2010 and 2019. This is equivalent to about 190,000 excess deaths, or 3 percent of all deaths. Taking into account the years of life lost, we conclude that the costs of austerity significantly exceeded the benefits derived from reduced public expenditure."

But note the last sentence there in Berman(2025)! It’s nuts. There is no, “benefits derived from reduced public expenditure” unless it was less spending on warfare and unearned interest payments.

The Greece crisis study, Rachiotis (2015) abstarct notes, “The mean suicide rate overall rose by 35% between 2010 and 2012, from 3.37 to 4.56/100 000 population. The suicide mortality rate for men increased from 5.75 (2003–2010) to 7.43/100 000 (2011–2012; p<0.01). Among women, the suicide rate also rose, albeit less markedly, from 1.17 to 1.55 (p=0.03). When differentiated by age group, suicide mortality increased among both sexes in the age groups 20–59 and >60 years. We found that each additional percentage point of unemployment was associated with a 0.19/ 100 000 population rise in suicides (95% CI 0.11 to 0.26) among working age men.”

There was also a 32% cutback in GDP.

I think these are good reliable baseline numbers to use.

Problems for Empirical Analysis

Especially the helath studies correlated to IMF style “structural adjustment progreams” (aka. austerity policy) are particular studies, and the data cannot easily be systemitized into any particular measure of how unemployment costs relate to lost output.

I’d conclude then that the raw macroeconomic data probably has to be taken as sufficient, along with reasonable models of the likely lost output — from war versus unemployment.

Future studies

Given that austerity policy seems to always be found to negativeeyl impact mortality, helath, and life expectancy, it is perhaps not even necessary to quantiofy the real losses. Because any such unnecessayr loss is a virtual crime against humanity.

Are we goinng to spliot hairs about whetehr austerity kills billions or merely millions, or, “pffft… it’s only a few ten thousand people annual, nothing to see here.”