Department of Economics, Rikkyo Univeristy, Tokyo, Japan.
Department of Economics, Teikyo Univeristy, Tokyo, Japan.
PLoS One. 2022 Mar 24;17(3):e0264829. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0264829. eCollection 2022.
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.
本文考察了 2020 年第二和第三季度 COVID-19 引发的就业冲击是否与自杀率上升和安全网使用增加有关。我们利用日本地区就业冲击程度的外生变化，采用双重差分研究设计，以检验和控制可能存在的混杂因素。我们的首选点估计表明，2020 年第二季度失业率每增加 1%，每月每 10 万人中大约会增加 0.52 例自杀、28 名失业救济金领取者、88 名临时贷款计划领取者和 10 名公共援助领取者。根据这些估计值进行的简单计算表明，如果一个地区在 2020 年第二季度因 COVID-19 危机导致失业率上升 1%，这大致相当于第三大地区就业冲击，那么与 2019 年 7 月相比，2020 年 7 月的总自杀率、女性自杀率和男性自杀率将分别上升 37.4%、60.5%和 26.5%。由于我们的数据和研究设计的限制，这些结果主要是相关的，而不是因果关系的，但我们的基本发现对于几种不同的模型规范都是稳健的。
