The relationship between employment situation and health condition among Young Adults in Iran Economy

Employment and also unemployment rates are important variables in macroeconomic analyses, since they both have numerous economic consequences and influence on social-individual conditions as well. Changes in the unemployment rate, and its correlation with individual health (as an important factor in human resources), have always been the subject of previous research. Some studies consider health as a countercyclical variable. On the other hand, some studies consider the level of health as a cyclical variable. Taking into account that the Iran's economy suffers from stagnation and a rising unemployment rate with a mostly young unemployed population, studying the correlation between health and employment is great importance. The present study adopts the OLS regression developed by Burner (2009) to study the relationship among health, unemployment and economic fluctuations in Iran from 1990 to 2012. The data have been collected from the World Bank and the Statistical Centre of Iran. The variables used in the study include death rate, as the dependent variable, the proportion of the employed individuals older than 15 to the whole population (employment rate) and gross domestic product per employed person, as independent variables, and government expenditure for health, expenses for tobacco in the family budget (the life style index), shadow economy (for assessing the working conditions of the unemployed), as the mediator variable. Research' results show that there is a direct relationship between the level of health and unemployment, and also the death rate is a cyclical variable in Iran.