A new Hemline Index

Looking at Billboard No. 1 songs from 1955 to 2003 for a study to be published in the journal Psychology of Music, he found that in uncertain times, people tend to prefer songs that are longer, slower, with more meaningful themes. 8220;It8217;s Bridge Over Troubled Water, and That8217;s What Friends Are For,8221; he said. 8220;In better times, it8217;s more likely to be faster, upbeat songs like At the Hop or My Sharona.8221; The correlation isn8217;t perfect. The song Mr. Pettijohn8217;s raters called most meaningless, Macarena, was a hit in a relatively bad year.

The Environmental Security Hypothesis that he and his colleagues have been testing, that people look for reassurance in worrying times, also helped explain why Playboy magazine8217;s Playmate of the Year in bad times tended to have a more mature appearance 8212;older, heavier, taller and less curvy 8212;than those selected when times were good. Similarly, in a study of American movie stars from 1932 to 1955, he found actresses with mature features 8212; small eyes, large chins, and thin faces 8212; more popular in hard times.

Buying patterns too, can be predicted in economic downturns, according to Leo J. Shapiro, who has tracked consumer behavior since he was a young man in the late 1930s. 8220;During a recession, laxatives go up, because people are under tremendous stress, and holding themselves back,8221; said Shapiro, now chief executive of SAGE, a Chicago-based consulting firm. 8220;During a boom, deodorant sales go up, because people are out dancing around. When people have less money, they buy more of the things that have less water in them, things that are not so perishable. Instead of lettuce and steak and fruit, it8217;s rice and beans and grain and pasta. Except this time the price of pasta8217;s so high that it8217;s beans and rice.8221;

Almost anything can be an economic indicator. Back in the 1920s, the economist George Taylor conceived the hemline index, finding that skirts got longer as the economy slowed. These days, there8217;s been talk of a haircut index, with short locks signaling a market drop.

A downturn, then, could result in benefits unmeasured by the market. 8220;If people eat out less, the GDP goes down,8221; said Dalton Conley, a sociology professor at New York University, 8220;but nothing in the GDP captures what you gain if you cook and eat in a leisurely way with your kids.8221;

In a study of coffee growers in Colombia, Grant Miller, who teaches health policy at Stanford8217;s medical school, found that infant and child mortality rates fell as coffee prices slumped, and concluded that it was because parents had more time to take care of their children.

By most accounts, bad times herald an upturn in at least some crime. 8220;I8217;ve never been able to find any relationship between violent crime and the economy,8221; said Stephen Raphael, an economics professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. 8220;But there is a relationship with property crime. Whether it8217;s burglary, larceny or motor vehicle theft, they all go up with unemployment.8221;

And although Americans have a hard time paying their medical bills and preventive medical care takes a hit in a poor economy, some economists say that there are positive health effects.

8220;People are physically healthier in times of recession,8221; said Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. 8220;Death rates fall, people smoke less, drink less and exercise more. Traffic fatalities go way down, which is not a surprise when people drive less. Heart attacks go down. Back problems go down. People have more time to prepare healthier meals at home. When the economy weakens, pollution falls.8221;

This Panglossian view has its limits.

8220;People are healthier, but they8217;re not happier,8221; Ruhm said. 8220;Suicide rises and mental health may deteriorate.8221;

Ralph Catalano, a professor of public health at Berkeley, who found in an earlier study, based on data from Germany, that a bad economy was linked with a decline in male births, cautioned against predicting how this recession would reshape society.

8220;What we don8217;t know is what8217;s going to happen next,8221; he said. 8220;We don8217;t know yet how anxious people are going to get, or how many people are going to lose their jobs. The experience we8217;re going through is unprecedented. The last time we had this kind of experience was in the 1930s, and we didn8217;t have data.8221;

Conley, too, harked back to the Great Depression in suggesting that the current downturn could lead to a more equal America, if the richest people suffer the greatest economic losses. 8220;Nineteen twenty-nine was the peak of inequality,8221; he said. 8220;It8217;s almost like things get too top-heavy, and they topple over8221;.