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The association of COVID-19 employment shocks with suicide and safety net use: An early-stage investigation

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  • Michihito Ando
  • Masato Furuichi

Abstract

This paper examines whether the COVID-19-induced employment shocks are associated with increases in suicides and safety net use in the second and third quarters of 2020. We exploit plausibly exogenous regional variation in the magnitude of the employment shocks in Japan and adopt a difference-in-differences research design to examine and control for possible confounders. Our preferred point estimates suggest that a one-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate in the second quarter of 2020 is associated with, approximately, an additional 0.52 suicides, 28 unemployment benefit recipients, 88 recipients of a temporary loan program, and 10 recipients of public assistance per 100,000 population per month. A simple calculation based on these estimates suggests that if a region experienced a one-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate caused by the COVID-19 crisis in the second quarter of 2020, which is roughly equivalent to the third-highest regional employment shock, this would be associated with 37.4%, 60.5%, and 26.5% increases in the total, female, and male suicide rates respectively in July 2020 compared with July 2019. These results are primarily correlational rather than causal due to the limitation of our data and research design, but our baseline findings are robust to several different model specifications.

Suggested Citation

  • Michihito Ando & Masato Furuichi, 2022. "The association of COVID-19 employment shocks with suicide and safety net use: An early-stage investigation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(3), pages 1-26, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0264829
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264829
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    Cited by:

    1. Ando, Michihito & Furuichi, Masato & Kanayama, Hayato, 2023. "Discontinuous or Kinked Response? Dynamics of Unemployment Insurance and Public Assistance under the COVID-19 Crisis," SocArXiv vs8tr, Center for Open Science.
    2. Quentin Batista & Daisuke Fujii & Taisuke Nakata & Takeki Sunakawa, 2022. "COVID-19 and Suicide in Japan," CARF F-Series CARF-F-542, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    3. ASAKAWA Shinsuke & OHTAKE Fumio & SANO Shinpei, 2023. "The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Academic Achievement of Elementary and Junior High School Students: Analysis using administrative data from Amagasaki City," Discussion papers 23066, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).

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