Can Increased Automation Negatively Affect People's Physical and Mental Health?

In an interview last year, Secretary of the Treasury Steven Munchin told Axios that job automation was "not even on our radar screen," citing that the risk was still "50 to 100 more years away." But even if an employment apocalypse doesn't come to pass, fear of an automated future may be making Americans sicker today, according to a study published recently in the journal Social Science & Medicine that shows a correlation between automation risk and worsened physical and mental health at the county level.