Where Did The Missing Suicides Go?
In Search Of Missing US Suicides | Slate Star Codex
The US has fewer nongun suicides than anywhere else. The seemingly obvious explanation is that guns are so common that everyone who wants to commit suicide is using guns, decreasing the non-gun rate. But that contradicts all the nonfungibility evidence above. So the other possibility is that the US ought to have an very low suicide rate, and it’s just all our guns that are bringing us back up to average.
Of all US states, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Hawaii have the fewest guns. Unsurprisingly, suicides in these states are less likely than average to be committed with firearms. In MA, the rate is 22%; in NJ 24%; in HI, 20%. Their suicide rates are 8.8, 7.2, and 12.1, respectively. Hawaii has an unusual ethnic composition – 40% Asian and 20% Native Hawaiian, both groups with high suicide rates (see eg the suicide rate for Japan above). So it might be worth taking Massachusetts and New Jersey as examples to look at in more detail.
Either state, if it were independent, would be among the lowest-suicide-rate developed nations. And both still have more guns than our comparison countries. If we did a really simple linear extrapolation from New Jersey-level gun control to imagine a state where firearms were as restricted as in Britain, we would expect it to have a suicide rate of around 5 or 6 – which is around the current level of non-gun US suicides. This is much lower than any of the large comparison countries in the graph above, but there are two developed countries currently around this level – Italy and Israel. I think it makes sense to suppose that the US might have a low Italy/Israel-style base rate of suicides.
For one thing, it’s unusually religious for a developed country. Religion is one of the strongest protective factors against suicide. This also seems like a good explanation for Italy and Israel.
For another, it’s culturally similar to Britain, which also has a low suicide rate somewhere in the 7s. Other British colonies don’t seem to have kept this effect – Australia and Canada are both higher – but maybe the US did.
And for another, it’s unusually ethnically diverse. Blacks and Hispanics have only about half the suicide rate of whites; which means you would expect the US to be less suicidal than Europe. I previously believed this was because whites had more guns, but this doesn’t seem to be true: Riddell et al find that whites have higher non-firearm suicide rates too. So this could be an additional factor driving US rates down.
He makes a reasonably persuasive case that the suicide rate in the US would be especially low if not for the guns. Which is interesting in and of itself because it seems to me that suicide is one of the things we would be really bad at with or without guns. It turns out that even with guns, we’re pretty average.
This was an extremely interesting analysis and I don’t degree with his methodology… We keep hearing that the suicide rate is going up among teens, especially girls. I wonder if this also aligns with other countries? I’m 100% convinced it is tied to social media, and they also have social media, though I won’t pretend to know anything about how social media is used by teens in other countries. Do they bully each other in the same ways?Report
In absolute terms (suicides per 100,000), it looks like the suicide rate has increased more for boys 15-19 since 2007 than for girls of the same age, but because girls started from a much lower base, it’s a greater increase in proportional terms. But you know how the media are: 75% of Teenage Suicide Victims are Boys; Girls Hit Hardest.
Social media could play a role, but I think an opioid-related story might also check out, opioid use being a risk factor for suicide.Report
I question the methodology. We take three states (read: points on the graph) selected for being the most extreme, exclude one because we don’t like it, and compare the two remaining points to other points that we’ll choose because reasons.
Our conclusion is going to be what we wanted to conclude… except maybe it wasn’t as anti-gun as we wanted so we’ll just claim we should have done better.Report
Hawaii needs to be excluded because it’s gun ownership rate is MUCH lower than the other states (half of MA or NJ), but it’s suicide rate is much higher. That says uncomfortable things and goes uncomfortable places… like maybe culture and other things are much greater drivers of suicide than guns.Report
1. Suicide is a complex, multi-variate phenomenon. No one serious would say otherwise.
2. You can’t separate gun availability from “culture”. Gun availability is a facet of culture.
3. Studies have shown that most people who unsuccessfully attempt suicide are highly unlikely to ever make another attempt. Guns are a highly effective means to successfully kill yourself because they’re specifically designed to kill — that’s why hunters and soldiers carry them around.Report
“Gun availability is a facet of culture.”
That’s one reason why the UK has a problem with “knife crime”.Report
The ethnic diversity thing is confounded by the gun thing, since gun ownership rates are higher among whites than blacks, and way higher among whites than Hispanics.
The gun thing also plays a significant role in the gender disparity for suicide.Report