The Home Foreclosure Crisis and Rising Suicide Rates, 2005 to 2010

Houle, Jason N.; Light, Michael T.

doi:10.2105/ajph.2013.301774

Cited by 98 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 34 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In line with previous evidence on unemployment levels and suicide [13], excess suicide deaths during the Recession have been concentrated among working-aged men [61, 63, 70, 72], who may more frequently encounter job loss and foreclosure, although the literature lacked individual-level analyses. Again, active labor market programs and social insurance appear to have substantially reduced the negative effect of unemployment on suicide rates [61, 69, 73].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 76%

“…The most methodologically rigorous studies in this literature (i.e., those that use decomposition techniques and/or comparison populations) concluded that rising unemployment levels were likely to be a causal determinant of many, but by no means all, excess suicide deaths observed worldwide during the Recession [61–63, 67–70]. At least in the U.S., foreclosure and other housing-related distress accounted for a portion of the remaining increase in suicide rates, over and above the effect of unemployment [67, 71, 72]. …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Findings indicated that both personal and community-level experiences of foreclosure or housing strain were associated with increases in psychological distress [21–23, 27, 55–57] and suicide rates [67, 71, 72]. Individuals experiencing housing strain or foreclosure also reported declines in SRH [21–23, 35].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Men were more likely than women to suffer ill physical and mental health consequences [24, 61, 63, 70, 72, 74, 89], and minority racial/ethnic groups also experienced more negative health effects [14, 26, 52, 53, 79]. Fertility declined primarily among younger women [14–16].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Health Impacts of the Great Recession: a Critical Review

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The severity, sudden onset, and multipronged nature of the Great Recession (2007–2009) provided a unique opportunity to examine the health impacts of macroeconomic downturn. We comprehensively review empirical literature examining the relationship between the Recession and mental and physical health outcomes in developed nations. Overall, studies reported detrimental impacts of the Recession on health, particularly mental health. Macro- and individual-level employment- and housing-related sequelae of the Recession were associated with declining fertility and self-rated health, and increasing morbidity, psychological distress, and suicide, although traffic fatalities and population-level alcohol consumption declined. Health impacts were stronger among men and racial/ethnic minorities. Importantly, strong social safety nets in some European countries appear to have buffered those populations from negative health effects. This literature, however, still faces multiple methodological challenges, and more time may be needed to observe the Recession’s full health impact. We conclude with suggestions for future work in this field.

show abstract

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 76%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Health Impacts of the Great Recession: a Critical Review

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A qualitative study in five US cities, which included 14 focus groups of low- and mid-income homeowners facing foreclosure as well as foreclosure avoidance professionals, identified housing payment difficulties as a major trigger of psychological feelings of insecurity and worse mental health (Libman, Fields, & Saegert, 2012). Evidence from the US also suggests that foreclosure and eviction during the housing crisis was associated with increased suicide rates (Fowler et al, 2015, Houle and Light, 2014). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of housing payment problems on health status during economic recession: A comparative analysis of longitudinal EU SILC data of 27 European states, 2008–2010

Clair

Loopstra

Reeves

et al. 2016

SSM - Population Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although the recent Great Recession had its origins in the housing sector, the short-term health impact of the housing crisis is not well understood. We used longitudinal data to evaluate the impact of housing payment problems on health status among home-owners and renters in 27 European states. Multi-level and fixed-effects models were applied to a retrospective cohort drawn from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey of employed persons, comprising those without housing arrears in the base year 2008 and followed through to 2010 (n=45,457 persons, 136,371 person-years). Multi-variate models tested the impact of transitioning into housing payment arrears on self-reported health (0-worst to 4-best), adjusting for confounders including age, sex, baseline health, and individual fixed effects. Transitioning into housing arrears was associated with a significant deterioration in the health of renters (−0.09 units, 95% CI −0.05 to −0.13), but not owners (0.00, 95% CI −0.05 to 0.06), after adjusting for individual fixed effects. This effect was independent of and greater than the impact of job loss for the full sample (−0.05, 95% CI −0.002 to −0.09). The magnitude of this association varied across countries; the largest adverse associations were observed for renters in Belgium, Austria, and Italy. There was no observed protective association of differing categories of social protection or of the housing regulatory structure for renters. Women aged 30 and over who rented appeared to have worse self-reported health when transitioning into arrears than other groups. Renters also fared worse in those countries where house prices were escalating. We therefore find that housing payment problems are a significant risk factor for worse-self reported health in persons who are renting their homes. Future research is needed to understand potential sources of health resilience among renters, especially at a time when housing prices are rising in many European states.

show abstract

Beyond Gun Laws—Innovative Interventions to Reduce Gun Violence in the United States

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In the US, the gun homicide rate is roughly 25 times higher and the gun suicide rate 8 times higher than in other high-income countries. 1 At times, gun violence may seem like a uniquely US crisis that we cannot remedy, insurmountably tied into the very fabric of the nation-in effect, a public health problem of constitutional significance. But simply knowing that the nation is a gun violence outlier among nations is not sufficient in moving the country closer to solutions.When we think of how to prevent or reduce gun violence, a first consideration is inevitably laws and law enforcement. In line with this public predilection, much of the scientific research to reduce gun violence in the US has, perhaps unsurprisingly, focused on estimating the outcomes of state and federal laws, such as assault weapons bans, background checks, red flag laws, and licensing requirements. There are good reasons to focus on laws; gun laws in the US are generally more permissive than in similar countries with far lower death rates from firearms, 1 and, if successful, laws could have a populationwide outcome on gun violence.However, passing firearm-associated legislation, especially at the federal level, has been illusive, and law enforcement has been divisive and often detrimental. For example, although it passed with 240 votes in the House of Representatives a year ago, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 has still not been brought to the floor in the US Senate, even though nearly all of the US population supports universal background checks. In the absence of federal legislative action, many states have worked on their own legislation, sometimes strengthening (eg, Massachusetts, California) but mostly relaxing (eg, Missouri, Indiana, Tennessee) their gun laws. Variations in state gun laws create ripe opportunities for research, yet only select studies of state laws have rigorously shown reductions in gun violence, and the methodological quality of gun-law studies, as a body of science, needs to be considerably improved, 2 along with critical investigations of law enforcement practices.The public health, medical, and scientific research communities can no longer be at the mercy of US state and federal legislators, simply waiting for them to successfully passorrepeallawsastheonlysourceofscientificandpolicy innovation to prevent gun violence in the US. This is a weak and unidimensional forfeiture in the face of a complex and intransigentproblemforwhichtheUSpublicarerightlydemanding innovative, effective, and immediate solutions. Recentfundingallocationsforscientificresearchfromboth federal and private sources have opened new doors and legitimized gun violence research at major scientific agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which until very recently saw little if any such research as part of their VIEWPOINT

show abstract

The Home Foreclosure Crisis and Rising Suicide Rates, 2005 to 2010

Abstract: The foreclosure crisis has likely contributed to increased suicides, independent of other economic factors associated with the recession. Rising foreclosure rates may be partially responsible for the recent uptick in suicide among middle-aged adults.

Cited by 98 publications

References 34 publications

Health Impacts of the Great Recession: a Critical Review

Health Impacts of the Great Recession: a Critical Review

The impact of housing payment problems on health status during economic recession: A comparative analysis of longitudinal EU SILC data of 27 European states, 2008–2010

Beyond Gun Laws—Innovative Interventions to Reduce Gun Violence in the United States

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About