[LeCompteSftware]

It's 48 pages and I haven't read it fully, but it seems almost childlike that the paper doesn't address the obvious confounding variable:

"Does Unemployment Make It More Likely for Late Middle-Aged People, Particularly Men, To Drink Alcohol? Evidence From We Obviously Should Have Considered This In The Paper, Perhaps We Are Too Sheltered"

To be clear I am not being pedantic. The paper explicitly endorses the policy of pushing back the retirement age specifically because doing so likely reduces cognitive decline. I agree with this, in the same sense that shooting car thieves in the street without a trial reduces automotive theft. "Reducing cognitive decline in people near retirement age" might be better met with psychiatric intervention, so that unemployed people also get some of the benefits. Ignoring this confounding variable and prattling about "causal explanation" - while endorsing the policy of snatching away people's pensions until they work a few more years - is evil born from ignorance.

[gruez]

>but it seems almost childlike that the paper doesn't address the obvious confounding variable:

I thought that's the reason why they used "Evidence from Labor Market Shocks"? The idea is that when "Labor Market Shocks" (ie. mass layoffs) happen, the people who lose their jobs are somewhat random, so there isn't the confounding variable of low performers/sick people.

[AnimalMuppet]

I'm not sure that completely addresses the GP's point, because "mass layoffs" are still somewhat selective. You're more likely to lay off the people that you think aren't worth their pay, which would include those who are already suffering cognitive decline, those who are drinking enough that it's affecting their job performance, and so on.

[littlexsparkee]

this paper uses a Bartik / shift-share instrument that looks at changes in sectors and the localized effects (exposure) due to concentration/reliance on that industry. It's an exogenous labor demand shock, not a mass layoff which frames the decision as made at the company level. Skills matter in this consideration but the point is to account for that statistically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_J._Bartik

[LeCompteSftware]

It's not about "low performers / sick people," it's unemployment itself (especially sudden layoffs) making people more susceptible to substance abuse, regardless of their health when they're unemployed.

[notahacker]

Whilst that's a perfectly valid hypothesis, they explicitly did test for relationships with rises in opioid misuse and didn't find evidence to support it. There isn't even consistent empirical data to show unemployment as a causal factor in aggregate increased drinking, never mind it being concentrated among recently laid off early onset dementia patients. The reality is unemployment influences some people to drink more and others to drink less, the circumstances of the unemployment and the demographics of the individual matter as do the patterns of the drinking, and even the statistical relationship between drinking and dementia is complex as statistically the lowest risk behaviour tends to be "moderate" rather than zero alcohol consumption

[littlexsparkee]

I have to wonder how much of this is socialization and the valorization of having a job (and the detrimental health effects due to lack). We don't really paint a good picture of what else people could do with their time that's respected or interesting. So many people retire early but not to something - expressing feelings of loss, idle uses of time like TV watching because they haven't developed hobbies / interests due to hegemony of work. We've killed boredom with devices and work, now people can't deal with silence and the existential questions it raises - more comforting to just be told what to do.