Unemployment and Suicide: a Cohort Analysis of Social Factors Predicting Suicide in the US National Longitudinal Mortality Study

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of employment status measured at baseline on the risk of suicide by years of follow-up using a large nationally representative sample of the US population. Cox regression models were applied. In estimating the effect of baseline employment status on suicide, adjustments were made for baseline demographic & socioeconomic variables. After 3 years of follow-up, unemployed men were a little over twice as likely to commit suicide as their employed counterparts. Among men, the lower the socioeconomic status, the higher the suicide risk. Among women, in each year of follow-up, the unemployed had a much higher suicide risk than the employed. After 9 years of follow-up unemployed women were over 3 times more likely to kill themselves than their employed counterparts. (38 refs.)