Women's Health and the Economy

You've probably heard a little (or maybe a lot!) about the Financial Crisis that has been happening in the United States over the past few months. The headlines in newspapers for the past two weeks have all been about American car companies trying to get some help from the government ($15 billion in help, that is). Just Thursday was a report that 533,000 jobs were lost in November (that's the biggest number for one month since 1974).

But in all these headlines and numbers, you only hear about companies and executives and politicians who are trying to make decisions. But what about the people? And how is the Financial Crisis impacting women?

In an answer to some of these questions, a new survey was just released from the National Women's Health Resource Center. It has some shocking news to report:

• 45% of women have skipped health care in the past year because the cost was too high.

Just stop to consider the fact that if you have two American women in a room together today, it is likely that one of the two of them decided not to receive some form of health care in the last year (whether it was a prescription or a doctor's visit or whatever) solely because of the price.

But even in the face of rising costs, mothers still have their priorities set:

• While 28% of women report putting off a visit to the doctor when they were sick because the cost was too high, only 4% report putting off a visit for their child for this reason.

[Note: After combing the study's raw data for clarity, I believe that the percentage who put off a child's visit to the doctor is 4% of women overall, not just 4% of mothers.]

Things aren't looking too bright in the immediate future though:

• Among women who have not skipped medical care for themselves or their families in the past year, 55% say that they would be somewhat or very likely to do so if the cost they had to pay out-of-pocket increased significantly.
• And at the same time: 76% of women expect their and their families' health care costs to increase in the next few years.

I paired these two items to highlight the fact that skipping health care could be a reality for 75% of women in America within just a few years. Health care's price has already risen above affordability for 45% of American women and another 30% expect it to happen to them too. This is a financial crisis if I've ever seen one. But the highest, most devastating cost of all isn't monetary: Financial stress is trickling down from adults to children.

From a September, (fantastic!) front-page article in the Wall Street Journal:

At a little under three years of age, Bailey Haag can't understand the turmoil on Wall Street. But last week, the little girl's brow furrowed and her face grew sad as she overheard her mother on the phone, reacting to a ripple effect of the nation's economic problems -- her father's layoff.

Although her mother, Claire Crawford Haag, had hoped to shield Bailey from stress, the child knew from her mother's voice that "it was not a good conversation," Ms. Haag says. Noticing her daughter's face crumple, Ms. Haag began fashioning in her head an explanation a small child could understand.

Amid fallout from the nation's worsening financial picture, many parents are trying to protect their children from worries about layoffs and financial hardship. But children are actually silent carriers of family financial stress, research shows. They're not only keenly aware of it, but it makes them more likely to behave badly or develop emotional problems. To help kids cope, psychologists and researchers say, parents need to communicate in ways they can understand, keep family relationships on track, and give children a role in helping solve family problems.

Children's mental health (and apparently, even their performance at school) is directly impacted by the level of stress in their household. Returning to the Women's Health survey from earlier, I'd like to point out that 43% of women are worrying more about their health (in the last year). This means that despite mother's attempts to shield their children's health from the economic downturn (remember from earlier, only 4% of women have skipped on their child's health care in the past year), a negative impact is still being made.

Job security is lower than ever -- which means that employer-based health insurance can be relied upon less and less -- as women's physical health deteriorates ever more quickly.

• 42% of women report that their health has gotten worse in the last five years -- the majority of whom (53%) blame stress
• In terms of health care, 16% of women say their health has gotten worse because they were unable to pay for needed health care, and others say it has gotten worse because they lost their insurance coverage (10%) or a good doctor (7%)

And apparently women have taken on more stress than men in the last few months, due specifically to the financial crisis. Again, from the Wall Street Journal:


Are those numbers so surprising? Women are still earning 80% of men's pay (that statistic from 2007), while close to 1 out of every 4 children in the US is living with a single mother.

This is what it means to be in the midst of a financial crisis. Banks on Wall Street losing their value at a record pace, car companies struggling to not go bankrupt: these are only pieces of the puzzle. What makes a recession into a crisis is when 3 out of 4 women anticipate skipping health care in the near future (1 out of 2 have already this year), when millions of children watch their parents lose jobs (533,000 jobs in November alone). It may have begun in the financial sector, but when it reached into our homes and took hold of our very lives, that was when it became a crisis.