Abstract
Here we study the relationship between stock market fluctuations and emergency room visits in China. Using daily emergency room visit records from the three largest hospitals in Beijing from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2012, we find that a one percentage point decrease in daily market returns (Growth Enterprises Index) is associated with 0.185 (P = 0.040, confidence interval (CI) = 0.009 to 0.361, or 0.7%) increased cases of cardiovascular diseases and 0.020 (P = 0.060, CI = 0 to −0.041, or 2.5%) increased cases of mental disorders on that day. Moreover, a one percentage point increase in daily market returns (Growth Enterprises Index) is associated with 0.035 (P = 0.007, CI = 0.010 to 0.059, or 3.3%) increase in cases of alcohol abuse on that day. The health effects are highly nonlinear, instantaneous and more salient for older people and males. By contrast, diseases that are less related to psychological stress (for example, infections and parasitic diseases) are not significantly affected by market fluctuations. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that a ten percentage point decrease in daily market returns is associated with an approximately RMB 35 million increase in national medical expenses related to emergency room services.
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Data availability
The hospitalization data come from the National Health Commission in China and are confidential. We cannot disclose the data to the public under the nondisclosure agreement. Other researchers may access the data by submitting a data application to and signing nondisclosure data agreements with the National Health Commission. In addition, we have stored the data at Jinan University (JU) and Sun Yat-sen University. Researchers can request to visit and access the data stored on stand-alone computers at Jinan University and at Sun Yat-sen University for replication and validation. Other data are from public sources. Stock market data come from the CSMAR (https://data.csmar.com/). Weather data are from the China Meteorological Data Service Centre (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets). Air quality data are from the China National Environmental Monitoring Centre (https://air.cnemc.cn:18014/).
Code availability
The code for these analyses, along with a readme file, can be found at https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/bmg2wl47jhws8p6lh6ohw/h?rlkey=vbl7p98dcjszxgsdmfx2sfd4o&dl=0.
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Acknowledgements
We benefited from comments from numerous seminar participants at Peking University, Sun Yat-sen University and Jinan University. S.C. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (project 72003079). T.L. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (project 72003202).
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S.A., S.C., X.H., H.H. and T.L. designed and performed the research. S.C., T.L. and H.H. analyzed the data. S.C. and T.L. wrote the paper.
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Agarwal, S., Chen, S., He, H. et al. Associations between stock market fluctuations and stress-related emergency room visits in China. Nat. Mental Health (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00267-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00267-5
