The 1980s’ Farm Crisis and Suicide in Rural America: An Interrupted Time Series Analysis

• In Event: Macro Patterns of Anomie, Suicide, Crime and Imprisonment

Abstract

This study examined the association between the 1980s’ farm crisis and trends in rural suicide rates. Research consistently identifies a link between economic crises and negative psychological outcomes at the individual level, and several studies show that economic and other crises are sometimes accompanied by population level increases in suicide rates. We used monthly suicide data from 1968 to 2010 from the National Center for Health Statistics, calculating suicide rates for three geographic groups: rural agriculturally dependent counties, rural counties that were not agriculturally dependent, and the entire United States. We employed autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) interrupted time series techniques to model the direction, size, and functional form of any effects of the farm crisis on monthly suicide rates. By distinguishing between agriculture-dependent and agriculture-independent rural counties, we can determine if any effects are unique to farming communities and thus attributable to the turmoil of the commodity crop agricultural economy. The results of this interrupted time series analysis have important implications for the study of economic crises and other types of catastrophic events on population level suicide mortality.

Authors

• Mark Berg, University of Iowa

• William Alex Pridemore, Georgia State University

• Mitchell B. Chamlin, Texas State University

• Ethan Rogers, University of Iowa