Posts
Whatever the levels of human suffering during the Great Depression there was also hope.
More
Foreclosures and Suicides than During the Great Depression
17
May, 2013
The
San Francisco Chronicle notes
that it is difficult to keep track of foreclosure rates now … let
alone during the Great Depression:
Foreclosure
rates of the late 2000s are often compared with those of the Great
Depression, which took place through the first half of the 1930s.
However, there were no public or private agencies keeping track of
foreclosure rates at that time. Indeed, the government still does not
keep an official statistic on the number of homes in foreclosure or
repossessed by banks and lenders.
But
the Chronicle provides estimates of foreclosures during the 1930s:
A
2008 article by David C. Wheelock, an economist at the Federal
Reserve Bank of St. Louis, cited annual reports issued by the Federal
Home Loan Bank Board during the 1930s. These reports reveal that the
foreclosure rate exceeded 1
percent
from 1931 until 1935. At the worst point in the Depression-era
economic crisis, in 1933, about 1,000 home loans were being placed in
foreclosure by banks every day.
How
does that compare to the last 5 years?
From
January 2007 to December 2011 there were more
than four million completed foreclosures
and more than 8.2 million
foreclosure starts
….
Approximately
1.4 million homes, or 3.4
percent
of all homes with a mortgage, were in the national foreclosure
inventory as of May 2012 compared to 1.5 million, or 3.5 percent, in
May 2011 and 1.4 million, or 3.4 percent, in April 2012. The
foreclosure inventory is the share of all mortgaged homes in some
stage of the foreclosure process.
Given
that there are currently around 316
million
Americans – more than twice the number during the Great Depression
– such high foreclosure rates mean that there may well be as many
people suffering foreclosure than during the Great Depression … or
more.
Already
some 5 million
homes have been lost to foreclosure; estimates of future foreclosures
range widely. [Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi], who has
followed the mortgage mess since the housing market began to crack in
2006, figures foreclosures will strike another
three million homes
in the next three or four years.
For
more comparisons of the Great Depression and today, see:
Suicide
rates are tied to the economy.
A
new report issued today by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention finds that the overall suicide rate rises and falls with
the state of the economy — dating all the way back to the Great
Depression.
The
report, published in the American
Journal of Public Health,
found that suicide rates increased in times of economic crisis: the
Great Depression (1929-1933), the end of the New Deal (1937-1938),
the Oil Crisis (1973-1975), and the Double-Dip Recession (1980-1982).
Those rates tended to fall during strong economic times — with fast
growth and low unemployment — like right after World War II and
during the 1990s.
During
the depths of the Great Depression, suicide rates in America
significantly increased. As the Globe notes:
The
largest increase in the US suicide rate occurred during the Great
Depression surging from 18 in 100,000 up to 22
in 100,000
…
The
number of deaths by suicide has also
surpassed car crashes,
and many connect the increase in suicides to
the downturn in the economy.
Around 35,000
Americans kill themselves each year (and more American soldiers die
by suicide than combat;
the number of veterans committing suicide is astronomical and
under-reported).
So you’re 2,059
times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a
terrorist.
Suicide
rates are up alarmingly among middle-aged Americans, according to the
latest federal government statistics.
They
show a 28 percent rise in suicide rates for people aged 35 to 64
between 1999 and 2010.
In
a letter to The Lancet medical journal, scientists from Britain, Hong
Kong and United States said an analysis of data from Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention indicated that while suicide rates
increased slowly between 1999 and 2007, the rate of increase more
than quadrupled from 2008 to 2010, Reuters reported.
The
Great Recession may have been at the root of a great depression that
caused suicides to soar among middle-aged Americans, a government
report speculates.
The
annual suicide rate for adults ages 35 to 64 spiked in the past
decade, according to a study from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control
and Prevention.
And
a shaky economy that nose-dived into the worst financial crisis since
the Depression may be the biggest reason why.
***
The
CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report said the annual suicide
rate jumped 28.4% from 1999-2010.
It
was the biggest increase of any age group, said the CDC, citing “the
recent economic downturn” as one of the “possible contributing
factors” for the increase.
“Historically,
suicide rates tend to correlate with business cycles, with higher
rates observed during times of economic hardship,” the report said.
David
Stuckler (a senior research leader in sociology at Oxford), and
Sanjay Basu (an assistant professor of medicine and an epidemiologist
in the Prevention Research Center at Stanford), write
in the New York Times:
The
correlation between unemployment and suicide has been observed since
the 19th century.
(And
see these articles by the Wall
Street Journal
and the Los
Angeles Times.
This is obviously true world-wide. For example, last year the
New York Times reported:
The
economic downturn that has shaken Europe for the last three years has
also swept away the foundations of once-sturdy lives, leading to an
alarming spike in suicide rates. Especially in the most fragile
nations like Greece, Ireland and Italy, small-business owners and
entrepreneurs are increasingly taking their own lives in a phenomenon
some European newspapers have started calling “suicide by economic
crisis.”
***
In
Greece, the suicide rate among men increased more than 24 percent
from 2007 to 2009, government statistics show. In Ireland during the
same period, suicides among men rose more than 16 percent. In Italy,
suicides motivated by economic difficulties have increased 52
percent, to 187 in 2010 — the most recent year for which statistics
were available — from 123 in 2005.)
Indeed,
more Americans are killing themselves today than during the Great
Depression. Specifically, there were were 123
million
Americans in 1930. The maximum suicide rate during the depths
of the Great Depression was 22
out of 100,000
Americans. That means that up to 27,060
Americans killed themselves each year.
In
contrast, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports that 38,364
Americans committed suicide in 2010. In other words, 2010 suicides
were approximately 142%
of suicides during the depths of the Great Depression. (The suicide
rate is lower today than during the Great Depression, but – given
that there are more Americans – there are more suicides each year.)
The
head of my local county’s mental health services confirmed to me
today that there are now more suicides now than during the Great
Depression.
The
Root Causes: Unemployment and Foreclosure
Why
do more people kill themselves during severe downturns? It’s
not just a downturn in the business cycle in some general sense.
It’s more specific than that.
Unemployment
and foreclosure
are the largest triggers in increased suicide risk.
People
looking for work are about twice as likely to end their lives as
those who have jobs.
***
Unemployment
is a leading cause of depression, anxiety, alcoholism and suicidal
thinking.
“Joblessness
is a risk factor for suicide,” said Nadine Kaslow, professor of
psychology in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at
Emory University in Atlanta. “The stress is just overwhelming. …
People are freaked out.”
“The
suicide rate started accelerating in 2008, 2009 and 2010 — someone
might still be working, but their house is underwater, or they’re
working but they’re working part-time,” Eric Caine, the director
of the CDC’s Injury
Control Research Center for Suicide Prevention,
said by telephone. “These things ripple into families. There’s an
economic stress.”
NY
Daily News writes:
“Most
people who commit suicide tend to suffer from major depression, and
this vulnerability tends to be brought forth by very stressful
situations like losing one’s home or job,” [Dr. Dan Iosifescu,
director of mood and anxiety disorders program at Mount Sinai
Hospita] said.
The
American
Association for Suicidology
says economic recessions don’t normally affect suicide rates.
“Although
US suicide rates did increase slightly during the years of the Great
Depression, reaching a peak rate of 17.4/100,000 in 1933, subsequent
US recessions have not been found to lead to increased national rates
of suicide in the period of or immediately following each recession,”
the group says.
The
latest numbers suggest suicide rates for middle-aged Americans now
surpass the peak during the Depression. And there’s another
possible explanation.
“There
is a clear and direct relationship between rates of unemployment and
suicide,” the suicidology group says in its statement.
“The
peak rate of suicide in 1933 occurred one year after the total US
unemployment rate reached 25 percent of the labor force. Similar
findings have been documented internationally. At the individual
level, unemployed individuals have between two and four times the
suicide rate of those employed.”
The
group also raises concern about the home foreclosure rate.
Indeed,
it is likely that more
people have lost their jobs
during this “Great Recession” than during the Great Depression …
especially when you look at the masses
of people
who have given up altogether and dropped out of the work force.
And
it is possible that more
people have lost their homes through foreclosure
than during the Great Depression as well.
No
wonder there are so many suicides …
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.