Equally, there is a substantial amount of research that shows economic downturns are strongly associated with worse health, particularly in the area of mental health and some causes of mortality. These surprising, and seemingly contradictory, results have led to a body of research that seeks to provide a better understanding of how macroeconomic conditions can influence health outcomes. This paper builds on these existing studies by first undertaking a review of the available empirical research and, second, undertaking a new piece of analysis using well-tested methodologies.