Unemployment and Health: A Disaster and Challenge

Unemployment, like smoking, is a health hazard not only for the unemployed person but also for his or her family members. In this short book Dr Smith, who is an assistant editor for theBritish Medical Journal, provides a thorough, easy-to-read review of what is known about the relationship between unemployment and health. The book consists of a revised and expanded series of articles that appeared in theBritish Medical Journal; the contents are heavily oriented toward Britain, and this will probably limit the book's appeal to an American audience. To document that unemployment harms health, the author has drawn on material from psychology, sociology, economics, history, literature, and journalism, as well as medicine. Throughout the book he draws parallels between unemployment and its effects in the 1930s, on the one hand, and unemployment's effects in the 1980s, on the other. To the extent that the author's aim was to