IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jhecon/v107y2026ics0167629626000330.html

Air quality and suicide

Author

Listed:
  • Persico, Claudia
  • Marcotte, Dave E.

Abstract

We study the relationship between air pollution and suicide using detailed daily cause of death data from all death certificates in the U.S. over eight years. Using a two-stage residual inclusion estimator with wind direction as an instrument for daily pollution exposure, we estimated that a 1 μg/m3 increase in daily PM2.5 is associated with a 0.39% increase in daily suicides and a 50.5% increase in monthly suicide-related hospitalizations. We find relatively large effects for men, young persons, and in counties where the mean level of pollution is above the median. Our event study estimates show the relationship between pollution and suicide exposure is contemporaneous.

Suggested Citation

  • Persico, Claudia & Marcotte, Dave E., 2026. "Air quality and suicide," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:107:y:2026:i:c:s0167629626000330
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2026.103135
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629626000330
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2026.103135?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:107:y:2026:i:c:s0167629626000330. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505560 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.