Template-Type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Kronenberg, Christoph
Author-Name-First: Christoph
Author-Name-Last: Kronenberg
Title: New(spaper) Evidence of a Reduction in  Suicide Mentions during the 19th‐century US  Gold Rush 
Abstract: I analyze the relationship between state‐level economic shocks and suicides using historical US gold discoveries (1840‐1860) as a large unexpected economic shock. Gold discoveries were an unexpected and large economic shock of up to 3.5% of GDP. They provide as good as random variation to the local economy, that I use to estimate the effect of economic changes on suicides. Comprehensive mortality data by state and year does not exist for the US for 1840 to 1860. I thus make use of web scraped data from a newspaper archive and use suicide mentions per 100,000 pages as a proxy for suicides. Results show that overall gold discoveries are linked with a clear reduction in newspaper suicide mentions. The results indicate that an economic shock changes the suicide rate by one for every $136,659 to $251,145. This is estimate implies a higher cost‐effectiveness than previous research but is still seven to fourteen times the size of modern, cost‐effective suicide prevention method.
Keywords: Gold Rush,  Economic Shock,  Suicide,  Newspaper
Creation-Date: 2020-11-13
DOI: 10.17185/duepublico/73382
File-URL: https://duepublico2.uni-due.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/duepublico_derivate_00073182/CINCH_Series_2020_04.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 1661823
Handle: RePEc:ajt:wcinch:73382