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Falling stock 'send people to hospitals'
US study shows increase in number of admissions with drop in equities
PHILADELPHIA - Falling stocks get people worried sick, if hospital records are any guide.
A one-day drop in equities of around 1.5 per cent is followed by about a 0.26 per cent increase in hospital admissions on average over the next two days, according to a March 2013 study by associate professors of finance Joseph Engelberg and Christopher Parsons of the University of California at San Diego.
The impact on psychological conditions such as anxiety or panic attacks is even stronger and more immediate, with admissions jumping twice that much in one day.
"It is a very straightforward result," Prof Engelberg said on Sunday at the American Economic Association's annual meeting in Philadelphia, where he presented the findings. The results were based on almost three decades of daily admission data for California hospitals. Hospitalisation rise on days when shares fall, and "people are hospitalised disproportionately for mental conditions".
Equity market losses appeared to induce 3,700 market-related hospitalisations a year in California, which implies visits add roughly US$650 million a year to US health-care costs when data from the most-populous state are extrapolated nationally, the dons estimated. They cited Census Bureau data showing an average hospitalisation event costs around US$21,000.
Mental-health admissions show up more quickly, with virtually the entire effect appearing the first day, the paper showed. That was especially true on Oct 19, 1987, when admissions jumped more than 5 per cent after Standard & Poor's 500 Index plunged 20 per cent in the "Black Monday" crash, the researchers wrote.
The effect of a large market drop is twice as strong during periods of low volatility because "extreme returns are more surprising to investors", the dons concluded.
"Imagine you are in a low-volatility regime and you have a big day down," Prof Engelberg said on Sunday on the panel discussion. "That stresses people out a lot more than if you are in a high-volatility regime."
The broader market affects people as much as local stocks. People are affected by the prospects of local companies, which may relate most directly to their own job or income, as much as they are by the fate of firms in other regions, according to the researchers, who compared health sensitivities for shares of California companies versus those based outside of the state.
"Both California returns and non-California returns send Californians into the hospital," Prof Engelberg said on the panel. Even people who do not own any stocks suffer from a market drop as they see their own economic prospects dim, he said.
Their study was based on patient records from every California hospital from 1983 to 2011. The state's 38 million residents make up about one-eighth of the American population.
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