Abstract
While it has long been recognised that periods of economic uncertainty, characterised by increased unemployment and lower economic activity, are associated with increased suicide rates, no study has examined the impact of policy-related economic uncertainty on suicide mortality. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between economic policy uncertainty and suicide mortality in the United States over the period 1950–2013 , while controlling for several other socioeconomic determinants of suicide mortality, as well as age- and gender-variations. The results of the analysis reveal that increased economic policy uncertainty is associated with increased suicide mortality of the youngest and the oldest segments of the male population in the United States, while the female population across all ages is found to be resilient to changes in economic policy uncertainty.
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Source: WHO, CDC and Baker et al. (2015)
Notes
For a comprehensive survey of socioeconomic determinants of suicides see Chen et al. (2012).
We have checked and confirmed that compatibility is ensured when extending the data from WHO Mortality with data from the CDC database from 2010 onwards.
The EPU index data, as well as their detailed description, can be obtained from http://www.policyuncertainty.com/us_historical.html.
An interesting, yet worrisome, aspect of our results is that EPU is shown to affect the age-group of 15–24 as well. This could possibly be driven by males in the age range of of 22–24 years, during which point in their lives the students enter into the job market after an undergraduate degree. Also, the younger generation is relatively more informed and forward-looking before entering into the job market and a bleak forecast of the economy, due to higher EPU, could lead to the increased impact on suicide rates for this age group.
The results of this analysis for the various age sub-groups point to similar conclusions. These results are available upon request from the authors.
Once again, the results for the various age sub-groups point to similar conclusions and thus are not presented, however, are available upon request from the authors.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the editor (Filomena Maggino) and three anonymous reviewers for very insightful comments and suggestions on a previous version of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.
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Antonakakis, N., Gupta, R. Is Economic Policy Uncertainty Related to Suicide Rates? Evidence from the United States. Soc Indic Res 133, 543–560 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-016-1384-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-016-1384-4
Keywords
- United States
- Economic policy uncertainty
- Suicide
JEL Classification
- E60 I31
- J11
- C22