Slow Economy Forces God to Layoff Angels!

clipped from money.cnn.com Fewer deaths during a recession The death rate went down as unemployment rose - a lesson for companies: overworked employees can be bad for business. (Fortune Magazine) -- Profits are down at Hillenbrand, America's largest maker of caskets. As we grind through the longest recession in 75 years, Americans across the land are not dropping like flies. In fact, there's a virtual epidemic of people not dying. This rise in the living was predictable. The truth, little known but well documented, is that death rates decline and healthy living habits improve in tough economic times. Extensive research by Christopher J. Ruhm, an economist at the University of North Carolina, shows that a one-percentage-point rise in the unemployment rate reduces the death rate by 0.5%. Those are U.S. results, but other studies show the same effect in Spain, Germany, and the 23 OECD countries in aggregate. People live longer in recessions mainly because