# Cardiovascular Health Effects of the Great Recession

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 2020 · $628,085

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Few Americans were untouched by the Great Recession (GR). Though one might expect major economic
downturns such as this to negatively affect physical health, the evidence is, in fact, mixed. This project will
integrate biologically-informed empirical methods with uniquely rich longitudinal data at the individual and local
market level to test hypotheses about the effects of economic stress from the GR on cardiovascular disease
(CVD) risk factors and events. Six waves of CVD risk factors and validated CVD events from the Multi-Ethnic
Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) collected before and after the GR will be linked with detailed time-varying
area- and demographic-specific measures of local labor and housing market conditions. The first four waves of
MESA, collected between mid-2000 and mid-2007, before the onset of the GR in 2008, will be used to estimate
individual-specific aging trajectories. The fifth wave, collected in 2010 through 2012 immediately post GR, and
the sixth wave, collected in 2016 and 2017, will be used to investigate both short and longer-term effects of the
Recession beyond the expected age-related changes that we allow to differ for each individual. Specific aims
of this project are to: (1) test hypotheses about effects of exposures to different sources of economic stress
on six major biological risk factors for CVD, controlling for individual-specific trajectories of biology, exploiting
plausibly exogenous variation in the severity of the GR and post-recession recovery to isolate causal effects.
This includes, for example, comparing effects of changes in housing market conditions on those who owned
homes pre-Recession vs. those who did not. (2) test biologically informed hypotheses about the timing and
persistence of these effects across systems; (3) test whether GR effects on biological risk factors are reflected
in increased rates of CVD events – a hard clinical outcome; (4) test whether potential pathway variables: health
behaviors, health insurance, medication use (anti-hypertensives, diabetes medications, and statins),
depression, and social support changed with the economic stresses of the GR; and (5) measure CRP levels in
stored plasma from MESA for this research and for future use by the entire research community. Integrating
insights from biology and economics, this project will provide new, credible evidence on the causal effects of
economic conditions on health by leveraging unique strengths of MESA to test biologically informed
hypotheses regarding differential impacts of the GR on different biomarkers over time, using innovative models
that control for individual-specific aging trends in biology, while exploiting variation in economic stress across
population sub-groups from differential exposures to the unanticipated changes in local housing and labor
markets. Empirical estimates from this work of the magnitude of health impacts of varying levels of economic
stress will provide a comprehen...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9873891
- **Project number:** 5R01AG055955-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** Arun S Karlamangla
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $628,085
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-07-01 → 2023-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9873891

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9873891, Cardiovascular Health Effects of the Great Recession (5R01AG055955-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9873891. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*