Another Study Ties Higher Minimum Wage with Reduced Suicides

I’ve written about it before: Economics and suicide are tied. To be clear, that’s not to say that poor people are more likely to die by suicide; by and large, suicide crosses economic boundaries. What is more likely to be associated with increases or decreases in suicide rates is a change in economic status: An increase leads to lowered suicide rates, while a decrease leads to higher rates.

And that brings us to this study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. The study examined 25 years of economic and suicide rates in all fifty states and Washington, D.C. From the results of the study:

The effect of a US$1 increase in the minimum wage ranged from a 3.4% decrease (95% CI 0.4 to 6.4) to a 5.9% decrease (95% CI 1.4 to 10.2) in the suicide rate among adults aged 18–64 years with a high school education or less. We detected significant effect modification by unemployment rate, with the largest effects of minimum wage on reducing suicides observed at higher unemployment levels.

In other words, an increase in the minimum wage can save lives.

This study was picked up in numerous major media outlets, including CNN and NPR. As the CNN story noted, if you assume that the data from this story is accurate, an increase of $2 could have saved upwards of 40,000 lives between 2009-2015.

This study shows many things, but there are two, in particular, I want to focus on.

First: It challenges the idea that suicide is exclusively related to mental health, or at least adds a qualifier and a modifier to that idea. I think that when most people think of suicide, they think that a person who dies by suicide must be mentally ill. That makes sense, of course, and it’s a perfectly logical conclusion to reach. However, it’s not completely supported by the evidence. If depression was the only thing that mattered when it came to a suicide attempt, the minimum wage wouldn’t make a difference unless you assume that economic status is tied directly to mental health.

What this shows, again, is that suicide is not simply a matter of mental illness.

And that leads me to my second point: Everything is connected. Mental health is deeply connected to economics, and if we can ensure a robust social safety net, fair wages and equal opportunity, we can reduce suicides and save lives. This study proves it – again – and it isn’t even the first to make the argument that work and work hours are tied to minimum wage.

As public policymakers, we have a job to address major problems (like the massive spike in suicides) in a manner that is holistic and comprehensive. That means not only improving access to mental health care but reducing the causes of suicide.

That means increasing the minimum wage.