A recent Nielsen report listed tobacco, carbonated drinks and eggs as especially vulnerable to recession, and candy, beer and pasta sauce as recession-proof. On Thursday, Hershey’s announced third-quarter sales and income higher than last year’s. (“We offer a tremendous variety of affordable indulgences, and people love chocolate, even in hard times,” said Kirk Saville, a company spokesman.)

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, there’s been talk of a haircut index, with short locks signaling a market drop.

The economic downturn could signal significant changes in American life.

“A stunning statistic is that unlike in past epochs, the higher up the income ladder you go, the more hours you work,” said Dalton Conley, a sociology professor at New York University. “More and more, things that used to be outside the marketplace are in the economy. Instead of mom or dad coming home with groceries, they go out, or order in.”

A downturn, then, could result in benefits unmeasured by the market. “If people eat out less, the G.D.P. goes down,” Mr. Conley said, “but nothing in the G.D.P. captures what you gain if you cook and eat in a leisurely way with your kids.”

In a study of coffee growers in Colombia, Grant Miller, who teaches health policy at Stanford’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.

“I’ve never been able to find any relationship between violent crime and the economy,” said Stephen Raphael, an economics professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley who specializes in urban and labor economics. “But there is a relationship with property crime. Whether it’s burglary, larceny or motor vehicle theft, they all go up with unemployment.”

And already, the market drop has created many personal crises.

“We’ve never had this level of call volume” said Dr. Richard A. Chaifetz, chief executive of ComPsych, the largest provider of employee assistance programs, covering 27 million people. “It’s been going up gradually all year, but then it spiked and we’re up 20, 30 percent since late July. And where relationships and personal psychology issues used to the be the No. 1 reason people called, it’s now financial and legal issues that are No. 1.”