Findings from this examination clearly indicated that Thailand’s economic
fluctuations between 1980 and 2000 generated not only negative impact on economic
security among population in both micro and macro levels, but also deaths. The findings
are similar to the events of those that had occurred in Spain and South Korea, and have
the same pattern i.e. the present year rarely has the highest impact on mortality. Rather,
the one and two years after have the most influences. Results from Table 2 and Table 3
which focused on Lag1 and Lag2 equations indicated clearly that cirrhosis takes time to
kill people, since the coefficients of the two equations of both groups turned out to be
negative, meaning that the reduction of GDP per head increased the deaths due to
cirrhosis. Accordingly, it could be concluded that cirrhosis has a significant impact on
deaths of population after one or two years, not on the current year of Lag0. Empirical
findings here can be affirmed that economic crisis in the present year is not the most
important and does not have the most influence on mortality when employing cirrhosis
cause of death as an example. The incidence can occur in both working age group and
older population. For this reason, it is important for economists to consider any
economic policies before implementing to see if there would be any short term impact
or long term consequence that would occur after implementation of the policy.
Otherwise, the country will be facing the same experiences as that happened in 1997.
The economic crisis in 1997 provides us with a memorable experience and lesson since
it directly generated deaths from cirrhosis patients in working people.