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Suicides in Rural America Increased More Than 40% in 16 Years

194 points by AaronFriel 10y ago

pmoriarty 10y ago
How many of these suicides are war veterans? Don't people from rural states have a disproportionate number of enlistees in to the military? And hasn't there been a huge increase in veteran suicides since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?
- aphextron 10y ago
  >I wonder how many of these suicides are war veterans. The overall share of combat veterans within the population as a whole is much smaller than most people think. It's less than 1%. While the suicide rates are much higher than the general population, the total numbers are relatively insignificant.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    1% of the total US population, but what percentage of rural America, and (more to the point), what percentage of the suicides in rural America?
- pdx 10y ago
  In April 2005, the Chicago Tribune cited a statistic that 35 percent of those who died in Iraq and Afghanistan were from small, rural towns, in contrast to 25 percent of the population. This point runs counter to the picture, painted by Rangel and others, of heavy enlistment reliance on poor, black urban neighborhoods. Indeed, recruits are disproportionately rural, not urban, and as rural concentration rises, so does military enlistment. [1] [1] http://www.heritage.org/defense/report/who-bears-the-burden-demographic-characteristics-us-military-recruits-and-after-911 http://www.heritage.org/defense/report/who-bears-the-burden-...
- unit91 10y ago
  > Don't people from rural states have a disproportionate number of enlistees in to the military? Maybe, but would they return there post military service? Given that urbanization is a thing, and that most military installations are in cities, I would think this would contribute more to the urban suicide rate.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    Maybe because they have family and friends there, and miss them terribly after suffering through hell in war? This need to be home could be further strengthened by something like PTSD or other psychological trauma that might severely impair one's ability to take care of one's self, and the need for help from one's family, which is likely back home.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cyberferret 10y ago
It appears to be a broader epidemic than just the US. Australian media also report that rural suicides (particular polarised amongst older farm owners and young people) has been on a marked increase over the past decade. Over here it has been mostly attributed to the extended drought, and the general decline of agriculture as a core factor of GDP, as well as the popularity of hard drugs like ice in rural areas. Not sure if that correlates with the conditions in rural US as well.
sgk284 10y ago
While the 40% number is interesting, the average increase across the nation was 30%. The much bigger question here is why did the rate of suicide increase more than 30% for the entire nation in a 16 year time span? It's a fairly consistent trend across all sorts of economic environments regardless of whether we were in a boom or bust. It's a shame there isn't a deeper analysis here. I have so many questions. Is the cause related to drug abuse? Would better healthcare help here? Is it mostly economical? Is the trend consistent across similar nations? Or could there be a link to something we mass consume and don't realize is harming us (similar to just a few decades ago when everything had lead in it).
- r00fus 10y ago
  Could it be related to the rising income disparity?
  - pcurve 10y ago
    2000 was historical low for US suicide rate. However, the current suicide rate is more or less in line with historical average. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Suicide-deaths-per-100000-trend.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Suicide-...
  - happy-go-lucky 10y ago
    It could be, but what could give rise to such disparity?
    - tjalfi 10y ago
      The Washington Monthly article Bloom and Bust (http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-and-bust/ http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-and-...) lists some of the causes of the rise in regional inequality.
      - happy-go-lucky 10y ago
        That's an informative article. Thank you.
jbhatab 10y ago
The lack of opportunity in rural America is disheartening to say the least. I feel the election of Trump is a direct reflection of the lack of empathy people have from cities have for rural America. I grew up in New Hampshire in a very rural town with a population of 4,000. Rural life sat well with some of my peers, but I loved tech and quickly left through college enabled by my parents ability to point me in the right direction, which many of my peers didn't have. The difference in opportunity I saw in the cities versus New Hampshire was staggering, not even comparable. I've enjoyed my life as I've explored more of America and ended up in the Bay, but every time I go back to New Hampshire there is always a tally of people I knew who died to Heroin. That or one of my friends succumbing to their addictions again. I know these people extremely well and I can confidently say the only difference between me and them was opportunities to enable my mind and parenting. It's disgusting honestly. Now I would love to solve this problem, but the lack of empathy I've seen in the cities for these people is the worst piece of this puzzle. People in cities have the privilege of wealth and the ability to direct America in a way rural America doesn't. The issues they face in rural America are completely ignored. While they cite that the popular vote strongly favored Hilary, they forget why the electoral college was created. To help rural America from being completely ignored while the cities with denser populations sway the votes towards their issues. I encourage everyone to go talk to a person in a rural county that is provided cheap heroin through foreign drug smuggling groups that don't have any opportunities. Empathize with their problems. Do I think transgender deserve equal rights? Absolutely. But go to a town ravaged by heroin and lack of financial growth and bring up transgender bathrooms to them. They will be baffled by your lack of knowledge of how their lives operate.
- nickthemagicman 10y ago
  Absolutely rediculous. The RURAL STATE populaces vote Republicans into every major STATE office who then ravage all safety nets and education in the name of cutting taxes... Brownback, Jindal, Walker... The "cities" have nothing to do with any of it. The rural states believe that education is liberal brainwashing so there's no way to help them join the knowledge economy. And it perpetuates because education keeps one from being susceptible to propaganda...
- dredmorbius 10y ago
dredmorbius 10y ago
The relationship between urban and rural regions is also interesting. From 1910 to 1990, rural population grew from 50m to 61m, bobbling about a bit in the process. Call it a 124% growth. In the same period, urban populations grew from 42m to 187m, a 445% increase. Among other things, this means that there's been a persistent shift of political power from people to land, effectively, via the Electoral College. Given the strongly conservative tendencies of rural populations, this helps explain the voting and electoral patterns of the past several decades. Having spent my share of time in and travelling through many of these regions, the social welfare patterns are fairly easy to understand. The region has visibly sagged over the past 30 years. https://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/files/table-4.pdf https://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/files/table...
itchyjunk 10y ago
Is this suicide attempts included I wonder? Cities definitely have more help groups and "watch" groups. Chances of survival are also more around cities if someone spots you can calls emergency services. (Someone noticing their loved one/roommate attempting something and calling the doctors for example: someone I knew had their stomach pumped under 20 mins of them taking pills and survived). I think opioid addiction is a symptom and not the cause. Maybe disappearance of rural environment where one grew up contributes to not being able to cope even more. Slightly offtopic but: http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10554 http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10554
- SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
  >I think opioid addiction is a symptom and not the cause. If the Rat Park study's conclusions [1] can be extended to humans, all addictions are symptoms of a deeper cause: Your life sucks. From what I've read, there's a feeling that the fundamental way of life that many of these people grew up with is really being threatened. Combine that with a complete lack of ability to support your family, and a sense that tons of people in cities (which are an anathema to their value structure) are getting ahead while they fall behind... Yeah, their lives suck, and they see no way out. Sorry to be depressing here. Hillary actually had some policies that could have helped, and still more if she'd had a friendly Congress to pass supporting legislation. Trump, on the other hand, wants to help people through an application of trickle-down economics ... sigh ... [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...
- DanBC 10y ago
  > Is this suicide attempts included I wonder? I don't think so. It's hard to define what a suicide attempt is, but most definitions would see far higher than 15 attempts per 100,000 population. EDIT: 2013 saw about 40,000 to 50,000 deaths by suicide in the US, with about 450,000 hospital treatments for self inflicted injury.
  - itchyjunk 10y ago
jimjimjim 10y ago
In my opinion it's not a US only thing. Every country seems to have increased rural->urban migration. Couple this with the concentration/centralization of manufacturing and economies-of-scale and there is less and less opportunity/jobs in rural locations. ps. There is NOTHING in any of trumps policies that will change this. e.g if manufacturing is not in china/Mexico/Bangladesh then it will only go to major population centers.
greatattractor 10y ago
Naive question: if rural America is so dreadful and cities are so much better off why not move to the cities?
chx 10y ago
Check https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/ https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/ for more. One of the best posts in 2016.
- rsa4046 10y ago
  Thanks for posting this ...
w1ntermute 10y ago
> imagine for a second someone telling you that 'you should just move from where you are because where you were born isn't good enough' Sounds to me like how this country was created. Are rural Americans so weak that they can't handle a tenth of the hardship their ancestors endured to create this country? If so, then it sounds like they're the ones standing in the way of Making America Great Again.
- iandanforth 10y ago
  I agree with this sentiment but this kind of rhetoric sucks. There are at least two groups to worry about. 1. The young who can be goaded and inspired to take on heroic risk and face the unknown and 2. The mature, established population which will fight tooth and nail to keep what they have built. Trump won some of both but the vast majority came from camp 2. You can't call someone who has worked 30 years in a coal mine weak. It won't work and isn't true. What some people are facing is the crushing realization that their life's work is gone and is actually derided by a large segment of the population. It's a blow to pride and pocketbook. Additional scorn is not going to change their minds.
  - LoonyBalloony 10y ago
    Like the Truman Show said... everything's been explored (that we can reach anyways). The "mature" population are well established even on the internet. Where will the young go now? To soon for the stars, to late for the planet and the internet. "What some people are facing is the crushing realization that their life's work is gone" They're clinging to the old model of life. Perhaps in our lifetimes we can do away with wage slavery? Maybe we already could have if we hadn't been so easily divided by 1% propaganda. Well at least they had a life's work at some point, unlike some of my peers.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Rural Americans are stronger than you know. We always have been. But strength isn't enough, and it hasn't been for a long time. You have to be smart, too, and ambitious - I was, when I moved to Baltimore right out of high school, with the idea of turning my lifelong interest in programming into the sort of career that Mississippi didn't, and so far as I know still doesn't, have the industry to support. Lot of people where I'm from had ambition, often beyond anything the local environment would support. Lot of them had the same smarts I did, too, and in many cases better - behind all the pretty talk, I'm really not all that bright. But smarts and ambition aren't enough, either, and haven't been for a long time. You have to be lucky - I was, when I discovered at age six the avocation for programming that's since developed first into a marketable trade and then into a solid career. Not that I knew that was what I was doing, of course. I just knew I really loved writing code, and I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to find that out and luckier still to have a family able to support it with an Apple II. Absent that luck, I'd have gone nowhere, because I'd have had nowhere to go. Maybe to college instead, and had a small chance of learning a marketable trade and a guarantee of decades' worth of debt. Maybe just nowhere. And that's not all the luck I've had - not by a hell of a long shot. That was just some of the earliest. That's the thing about a life like the one I've built, the life you're saying that everyone where I'm from should build, as though it were as simple as choosing to do so - none too fancy a life, to be sure, but I'm in no debt, and my career is stable and remunerative enough that I can afford to send considerable money home to those among my family who haven't had my good fortune - that life is the result of good fortune, to an utterly implausible extent. Had any of an enormous number of events turned out even slightly differently than it did, I would not now be in a position to tell you what an ignorant, prejudiced jackass you must be to have said something like what you just did. At ten on a Sunday morning? I'd probably be Ubering people from brunch to shopping, or something, in a car I'd have gone into debt to buy, always counting in the back of my mind how many dollars I need to make today in order to break somewhere close to even, and it'd be a miracle if I managed in even one month to send home what I send home every month now. My laid-off mother wouldn't be getting the right care for her Graves' disease, because who could cover the co-pay? And my cousin, paralyzed last year in the sort of "industrial accident" that happens when you're so hopeless broke that cooking meth looks like an option? Well, he'd still have the communicating pressure ulcers over ~15% of his body that he got from his first, incompetent, care team. So odds are I'd have a couple of funerals to worry about pretty soon, too, and that's far from cheap, quite aside from the fact that rednecks feel the loss of loved ones every bit as much as real people do. So, okay. You want to talk about rural people overcoming hardship to make lives of worth in the modern world? Hi there. I've done it. Having done it, I've had a great deal of opportunity to observe the degree to which doing so requires overcoming vastly opposing odds. Lest I be mistaken as arrogant, let me note this is not a boast. This luck is no cause for pride, any more than would be to have bought a winning lottery ticket. That I happened to be well placed to exploit the lucky breaks I got pales to insignificance alongside the vast, vast number of lucky breaks I've had - and much more so alongside the fact that, had matters gone only slightly differently from how they in fact have, all the smarts and ambition in the world wouldn't mean a damn thing. And here you are, arguing whether you know it or not that that kind of astonishing luck scales. Not only that, but slandering the people left behind by the fact that that kind of astonishing luck doesn't scale, left behind with no option but to make the best life they can under the circumstances or give up, and whose circumstances have grown latterly so hopeless that many of them are giving up - and that's the thing you overlook here, the crucial point on which your ignorance or carelessness renders all the rest of your analysis worse than useless. When those of my ancestors who immigrated did so, they did it because America was a nation capable of offering them hope - hope of a better future, for themselves and their descendants, than their home countries could any longer sustain. Even those others of my ancestors who were transported under criminal sentence, who lived years or decades or the rest of their lives under effective indenture, with their liberties sharply circumscribed - even to them, America was a beacon of hope for the future. But that was many years ago, and since then, America has changed. Where my ancestors and the ancestors of my cohort found hope, that hope has gone, to be replaced by hardship that seems everlasting and in far, far too many cases is. Somehow, in spite of that, many of us survive - not all, to be sure, and fewer every year, and in circumstances which I misdoubt would horrify a lifelong city man. Shall I tell you about the shack where lived some of my happiest childhood memories, and the way black mold gets into chipboard walls? But that's not where I live any more. I had the good fortune to go on to better things. Many among my cohort did not - people whom I loved and ran with and hated and fought with all through my childhood and adolescence, people who knew me and whom I knew in the way of children who hold nothing back, in the way that later life never can quite offer, men and women who taught me how to live and understand my place in the world, how to be a worthwhile human being, who initiated me into all manner of mysteries both wonderful and terrible, and made it possible for me to attain whatever value I can ever hope to manage. Those people, you're calling weak. And then you wonder how a Trump happens. Well, worse is coming, if things go on as they have. Worse first for you and then for us all. I don't want that. No sane man with any grasp of history could possibly want that. But the lie of progress, of the universe having an arc that bends inexorably somewhere, is too seductive, and the closest thing it offers to consolation is that I might get to see some people like you dragged screaming into hell before my own turn comes. I don't want that. I'd much rather none of us gets dragged into hell at all. I voted for Trump in large part to try to stave that off - in the hope that such a shocking setback might give rise to a general reevaluation of perspective on the left, to something which might lead to the realization that you cannot, you may not, simply wash your hands of whole peoples in their millions and expect to carry on as you please, never needing fear any consequence. But that hasn't happened and I don't think it will. Instead of reevaluation we see exhortations of greater energy for the cause, and instead of any gesture toward rapprochement we see intensification of the same exclusionary rhetoric and behavior that's brought us to the pretty pass we stand in now. And I don't expect you to change your mind because of what I've said here, either. It would astonish me if you did, not least because I've been much more honest than kind, which is too common a failing on my part in any case; effective rhetoric in this circumstance requires perhaps above all that the fissures of a fragile ego not be struck. But here I've barely tried to be otherwise, because I have in large part given up - be what I may, I'm hardly insusceptible to an absence of hope in my own right, and I've long since ceased to see much cause for that in my efforts to warn people away from the abyss into which they seem hell-bent on dragging us all. But if I've achieved nothing else, as I so strongly suspect to be the case, then I may at least find whatever consolation there is to be found in the fact that, when your turn comes as a turn will come for all of us, you'll have no excuse for failing to understand what is happening, and no ability truly to say that you were never told. Meaningless as it is, if that's the best I've got, then I'll take it. And who knows? Perhaps you will surprise me after all.
AaronFriel 10y ago
An interesting challenge to me is: how are these numbers reconciled with understanding the communities involved? Most people on Hacker News, I think, would argue that NYC, Boston, and New Haven have more in common with each other than say, a rural, sub-10k population town in West Virginia. But in this analysis of suicide rates, it's actually places like New Haven County in Connecticut and Wirt County in West Virginia that are more statistically similar than either is to Boston or New York City. In my own state, Des Moines and Iowa City would both be in the same category as the very rural towns with marked increases in suicide rates. If the suicide rate is a regression to a mean, what is it about dense major cities that slowed that? And what is it that makes what I - an Iowan - think of as a city statistically similar to the poorest and most rural counties in America? Discussion aside, I encourage anyone who has considered taking their own life to reach out and talk to someone. National Suicide Prevention Hotline 1-800-273-8255
- khuey 10y ago
  Outside of the immediately surroundings of Yale, New Haven is a pretty bleak town that has seen far better days.
stmfreak 10y ago
Didn't we just go through two major recessions in 2000 and 2008? Is anyone surprised that more people are giving up hope in recent times with all the factories closing, major retailer closing, unemployment at incredibly high levels (U6, not official statistics) and massive debt from student loans?
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  Recessions on average happen every 8-10 years or so. There was a recession in 91-92, one in 81-82, etc. That part of the business cycle is pretty cyclical.
throw2016 10y ago
Whoa! What a depressing thread. From the thread one would conclude this is not a country but a collection of economic interests. Hopefully this dry soulless perspective is limited to a small technical group in the bay area. You will simply not got this level of callousness in any country with a sense of a 'collective history and shared existence'. Sure there is 'callousness' in many places but there is also a sense it is wrong. Here some seem to have not only shed the sense of guilt or collective existence but celebrate their lack of empathy. No wonder this is the only country that takes rand seriously.
- gragas 10y ago
  >No wonder this is the only country that takes rand seriously. Most of the people who show no empathy to rural America are actually extremely left, self-righteous city dwellers who hate Rand. I often get the feeling that most left-leaning people who don't show empathy towards rural America are actually only left-leaning because that's the "morally correct" stance. Evidently, they don't care at all about others and will take every chance they can get---that is, every situation in which it is socially and politically acceptable for leftists---to feel superior. I'm not saying the right has any more empathy. I'm not saying the world needs more or less Rand.
patrickg_zill 10y ago
You can fix rural areas by leaving them alone. But it has to actually alone. I mean, get rid of the residential building code and any zoning restrictions on house construction. It used to be that a man or man and wife could build a new house for themselves, but the city regulations have been exported wholesale to the rural areas, and the expense of subdivision of land drives up land prices. So now it is virtually impossible to bootstrap by saving a lot of money by buying a few cheap acres and building a small house: everything has to permitted and to specification, reducing the comparative advantage that should be present.
boomboomsubban 10y ago
I'm not saying it explains all of the rise, but I wonder how much of this is more accurate reporting. I'm from rural America, and people dying of a "gun malfunction" or similar accidental deaths was a common thing. Nobody local was confused, but protecting the family was a large concern.
bougiefever 10y ago
I was just commenting to a friend of mine that the trend towards remote workers may reverse the shrinking of small towns. Not everyone wants to live in a big city, and if they can work for a company that is not located there, some will prefer smaller towns. Making sure that all of American has broadband will be as important as RFD was in the day to preserve our rural areas. For those who don't know what RFD is, it is Rural Free Delivery, and it meant that people in rural areas didn't have to pay to have their mail delivered. It completely revitalized the rural areas. Sears & Roebuck prospered because they could sell to the whole country. Today, broadband internet access is needed for everyone. I live in a rural area, and reliable, fast broadband has just become available. I have a remote job, and broadband makes it possible for me to stay living here. I can see where pockets of remote tech workers would want to live in the same place, maybe having a co-working place to go to. I have a co-working office I use several days a week that is all technical workers. It's the perfect balance for me between being home all the time, and having an office with other remote workers to work with. If people can live in these communities with an income that is middle class, they will help the communities to prosper, which may help reverse the trend towards suicide and drug use. I sometimes eat at the restaurants and shop in the stores of my small town. Our insurance agents and lawyers are there, and we do our banking there. Having real opportunities to maybe open a store, or work at the insurance office for the residents there might help their lives improve. My cousin's son died of a heroin overdose, and he was the nicest, funnest guy. Everyone loved him. Do city people think that those who are suffering are just losers who deserve their fate? That is simply not true. Many have families who love them, and the potential to have a good life, but heroin is such a strong addiction. They need help, not condemnation. I think the de-criminalizing it is essential to solving the crisis. My cousin's son would maybe have survived and gotten help if his friends would have brought him to an ER. I think they were afraid of getting arrested and having their place raided by police, and they rationalized that he would probably be ok by morning. If they didn't have the threat of legal problems over their heads, they might have called 911 when he was unresponsive. Instead, they decided to wait it out, and he died. These are not easy problems to solve, and it will require people to challenge their ideas about who needs fast internet, and who the people affected by the heroin epidemic are.
- therpe1 10y ago
anovikov 10y ago
When i was young, we were taught that Americans are used to moving and this is the main reason why America is rich: people easily pack up and move to where the opportunities are, so businesses don't starve without workers and people don't sit in the dirt in the hopeless places for the rest of their lives. It is strange to see that this seems to be no longer true and people feel so attached to literally hopeless places they found themselves in.
- lazulicurio 10y ago
  Armchair hypothesizing: increased use of consumer debt[1] to purchase housing and transportation, combined with modern technology that makes it increasingly difficult to avoid debt collection[2], puts a severe damper on peoples' ability to move and find a "fresh start". [1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/households-debt-to-gdp http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/households-deb... [2] Or any negative PR that happens to be recorded in the annals of google for all eternity
  - anovikov 10y ago
    Very good point. I have thought for a long time that the whole fake economy where people seem able to buy things they can't actually afford must backfire in some way. And so it does. Maybe solution is change in legislation that will scrap the mortgage industry, and make sure people buy properties in cash, or not at all? For example, don't make mortgage interest tax-free, enforce harder criteria for mortgage takers (like, no mortgage loan can be for over 50% of property value or 100% of pre-tax annual income of the buyer's household?). Yes most people will become renters for life, as they are in Europe, but at least this problem will be solved.
    - pm90 10y ago
      How will it solve this problem, really? This will funnel money into the hands of landlords. A lot of people will lose the only equity that they have. Wall street will get even more money to blow away... What you call fake economy is actually pretty real, yes its maybe not used responsibly by a lot of people. But lets remember this: while a lot of rural folks are feeling the pain (quite literally, looking at the opiod epidemic) the American economy as a whole is doing pretty fantastic. A ton of people are comfortably building equity in their homes.
wtbob 10y ago
> "People in the cities" (who tend to be strongly left-leaning) literally want to give money to the less well-off people in rural areas to help support them. It's more accurate to say that they want to give other people's money to the less-well-off. I don't know that it's terribly empathetic to use violence to take someone else's wealth and give it to another in order to get warm fuzzies or votes. Last night, I went to a banquet for an organisation which is (AFAIK) entirely funded voluntarily, and which helps folks in crises (natural and man-made disasters, e.g. hurricanes, earthquakes and wars) all over the world, regardless of creed. They only spend 8% of their revenue on fundraising, which I think is pretty good. I voluntarily wrote them a cheque, and was glad to do it. The moral calculus would be completely different had I voted to send armed agents to raid your bank account and give those funds to the organisation.
- gipp 10y ago
  So, I am not a libertarian, but I do think the libertarian wing of this country does sometimes have good points and provide a valuable alternative perspective on some issues. BUT, you guys have really got to stop this godawful stupid "point of a gun" rhetoric you're all cribbing directly from Atlas Shrugged. Yes, I understand the metaphor you are trying to make, but it is a profoundly terrible way to make that argument and needlessly escalates every discussion and alienates anyone not already on your side instantly.
  - wtbob 10y ago
    > BUT, you guys have really got to stop this godawful stupid "point of a gun" rhetoric you're all cribbing directly from Atlas Shrugged. I've never read Atlas Shrugged. We pay our taxes because if we don't, armed men will try to arrest us, and if we resist them then they will kill us. Violence is the ultimate backstop of any law. That's fine: we need laws, and we need taxes. But let's try to ensure that we threaten & use violence as little as is reasonable. I think it was P.J. O'Rourke who suggested asking oneself, for any law, if one would wave a gun at one's grandmother to force her to comply. Laws against murder and theft? Sure, grandma had better not do that. Taxes to prevent people starving on the streets? Sure, grandma had better cough up. Laws against selling soup in one's home, or taxes to fund cowboy poetry festivals? Somehow I just can't see pointing a gun at grandma for that.
dibanez 10y ago
Without belittling the difficulties of rural areas, it seems just as concerning to me that all the lines in this plot are trending upward.
pharrington 10y ago
Pretty nice correlation between this and the advent of OxyContin.
user5994461 10y ago
> Ask yourself if you had said that about other issues in America. 'Why can't black people just start learning how to code to catch up?' Asians do that just fine. No excuse for Blacks.
- infosample 10y ago
  But maybe a reason.
- dang 10y ago
  Posting unsubstantively about a divisive topic makes for a bad HN comment. Please don't do this. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905407 and marked it off-topic.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I note that they attribute suicide to 'lingering effects of the great recession' although they show no spike in suicides around the great recession, just a steady increase. The 'elephant' in this particular room is that America has been involved in a prolonged military engagement in the middle east, nearly continuously since 2001. Further, the military and the national guard, tend to draw on young people from rural areas disproportionately because of the otherwise lack of opportunity to work. As a result we have sent over a million young people into war and then dumped them back into their home towns when they chose not to re-enlist or where discharged for other reasons. They commit suicide at a rate of 20 a day[1]. Take them out of the trend lines and see how that affects your analysis. [1] http://www.militarytimes.com/story/veterans/2016/07/07/va-suicide-20-daily-research/86788332/ http://www.militarytimes.com/story/veterans/2016/07/07/va-su...
- malandrew 10y ago
  Excellent point. I'm also curious about comparing the demographic that enlisted with the equivalent demographic cohort that stayed home in terms of age, educational attainment and socioeconomic status. Was the military the only hope they had for employment or did those that stayed home prosper economically and do generally well.
  - Kalium 10y ago
    Military service is almost never the only option, but it's often the best one for those who come back OK. Economic opportunity, travel, access to education, and social status in one package? That's a combination that's otherwise difficult to come by in rural Appalachia.
- curtis 10y ago
  From the article: > And roughly 65 percent of all veteran suicides in 2014 were for individuals 50 years or older, many of whom spent little or no time fighting in the most recent wars. The recent wars may have had a measurable impact, but I don't think it's the primary reason. It should also be noted that you absolutely should expect the veteran suicide rate to be larger than the suicide rate of the country as a whole for the very simple reason that suicide rates are higher in the U.S. for men and veterans are disproportionately male. This article from FiveThirtyEight is well worth a read in my opinion: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/suicide-in-the-military/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/suicide-in-the-military... The tag line from that article: > When service members die by suicide, their deaths look a lot like civilian suicides — the same people, the same risk predictors, and the same means.
taivare 10y ago
I just read a tweet , that 1 of 5 given a 10 day supply of opiates will go on to abuse it. I worked midnight shift in a big pharma chain in rural US. I have seen 1st hand the damage the pill mills from (rural doctors )our having on our rural populations. They have lost their jobs to NAFTA. I was able to get them to stop selling brass pot scrubbies ,go (plastic) junkies would use for screens. You could tell when they came in for the scrubbies, the checks came out the dealers knew when to peddle. One of docs had a thriving Buis. Local doc - highschool phys.- slum landlord (shell co.) and a pill mill for a day job ! ps. one junkie was selling pils $15 a pop he said & that 8yrs back ; said it took 20min lick coating off ; for grind & snort . . sad !
averroes 10y ago
This is consistent with Ann Case and Angus Deaton's work on rising mortality rates in the US outside of major metro areas, especially among adults without college degrees. Rising all-cause mortality rates, not just suicides, have already become the rule for many of these places. Many comments here mention opioid overdoses, and it's notable that, just as with opioid deaths and hospitalizations, rising mortality rates are distributed across almost all groups. But they are by far most severe among whites, who are in their late working years (~45-65 years old), and who live outside of major metro areas. (Education data are not included in this report but it's probably a safe bet that we are disproportionately discussing the un-degreed.) Yet, if you look at the CDC's data on suicide methods, only a small portion of the increase is explained by drug overdose suicides. Drug suicides are up markedly, but they remain only about one-seventh of the total and one-third of the increase. Instead, the largest increase is in deaths by hanging/suffocation/strangulation, which is twice as large in raw terms as the increase in deaths by drug overdoses. Suffocation, not drug overdoses, is the main reason why non-firearms suicide deaths have become as common as firearms suicide deaths. What does this tell us? Well, for one thing, people who suffocate themselves are frequently people who don't have access to firearms or lethal drugs - or who aren't familiar with them. Anyone who wants to understand rising rates of suicide should look especially carefully at why Americans are now suffocating themselves at a much higher rate.
norea-armozel 10y ago
I think the biggest reason for this trend is the decline in health and human services across the various states which have large rural populations because it's been the politically expedient thing to do when budget crises happen because it's assumed they rural pops will just move to the big city and get the services there. Little do they realize that takes MONEY. So, when you're dealing with the same economic downturns which cause the budget crises also lead to underemployment and unemployment you're not going to see many of those folks move because they have no money or very little of it. Ultimately, there needs to be an honest discussion among the rank and file of the American conservative movements on these matters. Specifically, they need to acknowledge that their whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality isn't working and that a whole new program needs to be adopted. Specifically one that acknowledges that Randian/Right-Libertarian approaches are dead ends in terms of sustainability. Whether they like it or not they need to accept that there needs to be some level of welfare in government especially now when the greatest disruption to employment opportunities are ahead of us (not behind us). We can't assume there will be plentiful well paying jobs that can/will emerge in the rural sections of the US. We need to assume the opposite as distance is costly to most industries and there's barely an operable infrastructure to support building up those rural parts of the country (especially when it comes to the Internet-based IT jobs). If there's anything they should do I think an infrastructure bill that focuses on getting Internet access and education programs out to the rural parts of the country would be a good first step on top of rebuilding and augmenting existing welfare programs.

194 points by AaronFriel 10y ago

How many of these suicides are war veterans? Don't people from rural states have a disproportionate number of enlistees in to the military? And hasn't there been a huge increase in veteran suicides since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars?

aphextron 10y ago
>I wonder how many of these suicides are war veterans. The overall share of combat veterans within the population as a whole is much smaller than most people think. It's less than 1%. While the suicide rates are much higher than the general population, the total numbers are relatively insignificant.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  1% of the total US population, but what percentage of rural America, and (more to the point), what percentage of the suicides in rural America?
pdx 10y ago
In April 2005, the Chicago Tribune cited a statistic that 35 percent of those who died in Iraq and Afghanistan were from small, rural towns, in contrast to 25 percent of the population. This point runs counter to the picture, painted by Rangel and others, of heavy enlistment reliance on poor, black urban neighborhoods. Indeed, recruits are disproportionately rural, not urban, and as rural concentration rises, so does military enlistment. [1] [1] http://www.heritage.org/defense/report/who-bears-the-burden-demographic-characteristics-us-military-recruits-and-after-911 http://www.heritage.org/defense/report/who-bears-the-burden-...
unit91 10y ago
> Don't people from rural states have a disproportionate number of enlistees in to the military? Maybe, but would they return there post military service? Given that urbanization is a thing, and that most military installations are in cities, I would think this would contribute more to the urban suicide rate.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  Maybe because they have family and friends there, and miss them terribly after suffering through hell in war? This need to be home could be further strengthened by something like PTSD or other psychological trauma that might severely impair one's ability to take care of one's self, and the need for help from one's family, which is likely back home.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cyberferret 10y ago

It appears to be a broader epidemic than just the US. Australian media also report that rural suicides (particular polarised amongst older farm owners and young people) has been on a marked increase over the past decade. Over here it has been mostly attributed to the extended drought, and the general decline of agriculture as a core factor of GDP, as well as the popularity of hard drugs like ice in rural areas. Not sure if that correlates with the conditions in rural US as well.

sgk284 10y ago

While the 40% number is interesting, the average increase across the nation was 30%. The much bigger question here is why did the rate of suicide increase more than 30% for the entire nation in a 16 year time span? It's a fairly consistent trend across all sorts of economic environments regardless of whether we were in a boom or bust. It's a shame there isn't a deeper analysis here. I have so many questions. Is the cause related to drug abuse? Would better healthcare help here? Is it mostly economical? Is the trend consistent across similar nations? Or could there be a link to something we mass consume and don't realize is harming us (similar to just a few decades ago when everything had lead in it).

r00fus 10y ago
Could it be related to the rising income disparity?
- pcurve 10y ago
  2000 was historical low for US suicide rate. However, the current suicide rate is more or less in line with historical average. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Suicide-deaths-per-100000-trend.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Suicide-...
- happy-go-lucky 10y ago
  It could be, but what could give rise to such disparity?
  - tjalfi 10y ago
    The Washington Monthly article Bloom and Bust (http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-and-bust/ http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novdec-2015/bloom-and-...) lists some of the causes of the rise in regional inequality.
    - happy-go-lucky 10y ago
      That's an informative article. Thank you.

jbhatab 10y ago

The lack of opportunity in rural America is disheartening to say the least. I feel the election of Trump is a direct reflection of the lack of empathy people have from cities have for rural America. I grew up in New Hampshire in a very rural town with a population of 4,000. Rural life sat well with some of my peers, but I loved tech and quickly left through college enabled by my parents ability to point me in the right direction, which many of my peers didn't have. The difference in opportunity I saw in the cities versus New Hampshire was staggering, not even comparable. I've enjoyed my life as I've explored more of America and ended up in the Bay, but every time I go back to New Hampshire there is always a tally of people I knew who died to Heroin. That or one of my friends succumbing to their addictions again. I know these people extremely well and I can confidently say the only difference between me and them was opportunities to enable my mind and parenting. It's disgusting honestly. Now I would love to solve this problem, but the lack of empathy I've seen in the cities for these people is the worst piece of this puzzle. People in cities have the privilege of wealth and the ability to direct America in a way rural America doesn't. The issues they face in rural America are completely ignored. While they cite that the popular vote strongly favored Hilary, they forget why the electoral college was created. To help rural America from being completely ignored while the cities with denser populations sway the votes towards their issues. I encourage everyone to go talk to a person in a rural county that is provided cheap heroin through foreign drug smuggling groups that don't have any opportunities. Empathize with their problems. Do I think transgender deserve equal rights? Absolutely. But go to a town ravaged by heroin and lack of financial growth and bring up transgender bathrooms to them. They will be baffled by your lack of knowledge of how their lives operate.

nickthemagicman 10y ago
Absolutely rediculous. The RURAL STATE populaces vote Republicans into every major STATE office who then ravage all safety nets and education in the name of cutting taxes... Brownback, Jindal, Walker... The "cities" have nothing to do with any of it. The rural states believe that education is liberal brainwashing so there's no way to help them join the knowledge economy. And it perpetuates because education keeps one from being susceptible to propaganda...
dredmorbius 10y ago

dredmorbius 10y ago

The relationship between urban and rural regions is also interesting. From 1910 to 1990, rural population grew from 50m to 61m, bobbling about a bit in the process. Call it a 124% growth. In the same period, urban populations grew from 42m to 187m, a 445% increase. Among other things, this means that there's been a persistent shift of political power from people to land, effectively, via the Electoral College. Given the strongly conservative tendencies of rural populations, this helps explain the voting and electoral patterns of the past several decades. Having spent my share of time in and travelling through many of these regions, the social welfare patterns are fairly easy to understand. The region has visibly sagged over the past 30 years. https://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/files/table-4.pdf https://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/files/table...

itchyjunk 10y ago

Is this suicide attempts included I wonder? Cities definitely have more help groups and "watch" groups. Chances of survival are also more around cities if someone spots you can calls emergency services. (Someone noticing their loved one/roommate attempting something and calling the doctors for example: someone I knew had their stomach pumped under 20 mins of them taking pills and survived). I think opioid addiction is a symptom and not the cause. Maybe disappearance of rural environment where one grew up contributes to not being able to cope even more. Slightly offtopic but: http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10554 http://www.davidsongifted.org/Search-Database/entry/A10554

SomeCallMeTim 10y ago
>I think opioid addiction is a symptom and not the cause. If the Rat Park study's conclusions [1] can be extended to humans, all addictions are symptoms of a deeper cause: Your life sucks. From what I've read, there's a feeling that the fundamental way of life that many of these people grew up with is really being threatened. Combine that with a complete lack of ability to support your family, and a sense that tons of people in cities (which are an anathema to their value structure) are getting ahead while they fall behind... Yeah, their lives suck, and they see no way out. Sorry to be depressing here. Hillary actually had some policies that could have helped, and still more if she'd had a friendly Congress to pass supporting legislation. Trump, on the other hand, wants to help people through an application of trickle-down economics ... sigh ... [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_y...
DanBC 10y ago
> Is this suicide attempts included I wonder? I don't think so. It's hard to define what a suicide attempt is, but most definitions would see far higher than 15 attempts per 100,000 population. EDIT: 2013 saw about 40,000 to 50,000 deaths by suicide in the US, with about 450,000 hospital treatments for self inflicted injury.
- itchyjunk 10y ago

jimjimjim 10y ago

In my opinion it's not a US only thing. Every country seems to have increased rural->urban migration. Couple this with the concentration/centralization of manufacturing and economies-of-scale and there is less and less opportunity/jobs in rural locations. ps. There is NOTHING in any of trumps policies that will change this. e.g if manufacturing is not in china/Mexico/Bangladesh then it will only go to major population centers.

greatattractor 10y ago

Naive question: if rural America is so dreadful and cities are so much better off why not move to the cities?

chx 10y ago

Check https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/ https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/ for more. One of the best posts in 2016.

rsa4046 10y ago
Thanks for posting this ...

w1ntermute 10y ago

> imagine for a second someone telling you that 'you should just move from where you are because where you were born isn't good enough' Sounds to me like how this country was created. Are rural Americans so weak that they can't handle a tenth of the hardship their ancestors endured to create this country? If so, then it sounds like they're the ones standing in the way of Making America Great Again.

iandanforth 10y ago
I agree with this sentiment but this kind of rhetoric sucks. There are at least two groups to worry about. 1. The young who can be goaded and inspired to take on heroic risk and face the unknown and 2. The mature, established population which will fight tooth and nail to keep what they have built. Trump won some of both but the vast majority came from camp 2. You can't call someone who has worked 30 years in a coal mine weak. It won't work and isn't true. What some people are facing is the crushing realization that their life's work is gone and is actually derided by a large segment of the population. It's a blow to pride and pocketbook. Additional scorn is not going to change their minds.
- LoonyBalloony 10y ago
  Like the Truman Show said... everything's been explored (that we can reach anyways). The "mature" population are well established even on the internet. Where will the young go now? To soon for the stars, to late for the planet and the internet. "What some people are facing is the crushing realization that their life's work is gone" They're clinging to the old model of life. Perhaps in our lifetimes we can do away with wage slavery? Maybe we already could have if we hadn't been so easily divided by 1% propaganda. Well at least they had a life's work at some point, unlike some of my peers.
throwanem 10y ago
Rural Americans are stronger than you know. We always have been. But strength isn't enough, and it hasn't been for a long time. You have to be smart, too, and ambitious - I was, when I moved to Baltimore right out of high school, with the idea of turning my lifelong interest in programming into the sort of career that Mississippi didn't, and so far as I know still doesn't, have the industry to support. Lot of people where I'm from had ambition, often beyond anything the local environment would support. Lot of them had the same smarts I did, too, and in many cases better - behind all the pretty talk, I'm really not all that bright. But smarts and ambition aren't enough, either, and haven't been for a long time. You have to be lucky - I was, when I discovered at age six the avocation for programming that's since developed first into a marketable trade and then into a solid career. Not that I knew that was what I was doing, of course. I just knew I really loved writing code, and I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to find that out and luckier still to have a family able to support it with an Apple II. Absent that luck, I'd have gone nowhere, because I'd have had nowhere to go. Maybe to college instead, and had a small chance of learning a marketable trade and a guarantee of decades' worth of debt. Maybe just nowhere. And that's not all the luck I've had - not by a hell of a long shot. That was just some of the earliest. That's the thing about a life like the one I've built, the life you're saying that everyone where I'm from should build, as though it were as simple as choosing to do so - none too fancy a life, to be sure, but I'm in no debt, and my career is stable and remunerative enough that I can afford to send considerable money home to those among my family who haven't had my good fortune - that life is the result of good fortune, to an utterly implausible extent. Had any of an enormous number of events turned out even slightly differently than it did, I would not now be in a position to tell you what an ignorant, prejudiced jackass you must be to have said something like what you just did. At ten on a Sunday morning? I'd probably be Ubering people from brunch to shopping, or something, in a car I'd have gone into debt to buy, always counting in the back of my mind how many dollars I need to make today in order to break somewhere close to even, and it'd be a miracle if I managed in even one month to send home what I send home every month now. My laid-off mother wouldn't be getting the right care for her Graves' disease, because who could cover the co-pay? And my cousin, paralyzed last year in the sort of "industrial accident" that happens when you're so hopeless broke that cooking meth looks like an option? Well, he'd still have the communicating pressure ulcers over ~15% of his body that he got from his first, incompetent, care team. So odds are I'd have a couple of funerals to worry about pretty soon, too, and that's far from cheap, quite aside from the fact that rednecks feel the loss of loved ones every bit as much as real people do. So, okay. You want to talk about rural people overcoming hardship to make lives of worth in the modern world? Hi there. I've done it. Having done it, I've had a great deal of opportunity to observe the degree to which doing so requires overcoming vastly opposing odds. Lest I be mistaken as arrogant, let me note this is not a boast. This luck is no cause for pride, any more than would be to have bought a winning lottery ticket. That I happened to be well placed to exploit the lucky breaks I got pales to insignificance alongside the vast, vast number of lucky breaks I've had - and much more so alongside the fact that, had matters gone only slightly differently from how they in fact have, all the smarts and ambition in the world wouldn't mean a damn thing. And here you are, arguing whether you know it or not that that kind of astonishing luck scales. Not only that, but slandering the people left behind by the fact that that kind of astonishing luck doesn't scale, left behind with no option but to make the best life they can under the circumstances or give up, and whose circumstances have grown latterly so hopeless that many of them are giving up - and that's the thing you overlook here, the crucial point on which your ignorance or carelessness renders all the rest of your analysis worse than useless. When those of my ancestors who immigrated did so, they did it because America was a nation capable of offering them hope - hope of a better future, for themselves and their descendants, than their home countries could any longer sustain. Even those others of my ancestors who were transported under criminal sentence, who lived years or decades or the rest of their lives under effective indenture, with their liberties sharply circumscribed - even to them, America was a beacon of hope for the future. But that was many years ago, and since then, America has changed. Where my ancestors and the ancestors of my cohort found hope, that hope has gone, to be replaced by hardship that seems everlasting and in far, far too many cases is. Somehow, in spite of that, many of us survive - not all, to be sure, and fewer every year, and in circumstances which I misdoubt would horrify a lifelong city man. Shall I tell you about the shack where lived some of my happiest childhood memories, and the way black mold gets into chipboard walls? But that's not where I live any more. I had the good fortune to go on to better things. Many among my cohort did not - people whom I loved and ran with and hated and fought with all through my childhood and adolescence, people who knew me and whom I knew in the way of children who hold nothing back, in the way that later life never can quite offer, men and women who taught me how to live and understand my place in the world, how to be a worthwhile human being, who initiated me into all manner of mysteries both wonderful and terrible, and made it possible for me to attain whatever value I can ever hope to manage. Those people, you're calling weak. And then you wonder how a Trump happens. Well, worse is coming, if things go on as they have. Worse first for you and then for us all. I don't want that. No sane man with any grasp of history could possibly want that. But the lie of progress, of the universe having an arc that bends inexorably somewhere, is too seductive, and the closest thing it offers to consolation is that I might get to see some people like you dragged screaming into hell before my own turn comes. I don't want that. I'd much rather none of us gets dragged into hell at all. I voted for Trump in large part to try to stave that off - in the hope that such a shocking setback might give rise to a general reevaluation of perspective on the left, to something which might lead to the realization that you cannot, you may not, simply wash your hands of whole peoples in their millions and expect to carry on as you please, never needing fear any consequence. But that hasn't happened and I don't think it will. Instead of reevaluation we see exhortations of greater energy for the cause, and instead of any gesture toward rapprochement we see intensification of the same exclusionary rhetoric and behavior that's brought us to the pretty pass we stand in now. And I don't expect you to change your mind because of what I've said here, either. It would astonish me if you did, not least because I've been much more honest than kind, which is too common a failing on my part in any case; effective rhetoric in this circumstance requires perhaps above all that the fissures of a fragile ego not be struck. But here I've barely tried to be otherwise, because I have in large part given up - be what I may, I'm hardly insusceptible to an absence of hope in my own right, and I've long since ceased to see much cause for that in my efforts to warn people away from the abyss into which they seem hell-bent on dragging us all. But if I've achieved nothing else, as I so strongly suspect to be the case, then I may at least find whatever consolation there is to be found in the fact that, when your turn comes as a turn will come for all of us, you'll have no excuse for failing to understand what is happening, and no ability truly to say that you were never told. Meaningless as it is, if that's the best I've got, then I'll take it. And who knows? Perhaps you will surprise me after all.

AaronFriel 10y ago

An interesting challenge to me is: how are these numbers reconciled with understanding the communities involved? Most people on Hacker News, I think, would argue that NYC, Boston, and New Haven have more in common with each other than say, a rural, sub-10k population town in West Virginia. But in this analysis of suicide rates, it's actually places like New Haven County in Connecticut and Wirt County in West Virginia that are more statistically similar than either is to Boston or New York City. In my own state, Des Moines and Iowa City would both be in the same category as the very rural towns with marked increases in suicide rates. If the suicide rate is a regression to a mean, what is it about dense major cities that slowed that? And what is it that makes what I - an Iowan - think of as a city statistically similar to the poorest and most rural counties in America? Discussion aside, I encourage anyone who has considered taking their own life to reach out and talk to someone. National Suicide Prevention Hotline 1-800-273-8255

khuey 10y ago
Outside of the immediately surroundings of Yale, New Haven is a pretty bleak town that has seen far better days.

stmfreak 10y ago

Didn't we just go through two major recessions in 2000 and 2008? Is anyone surprised that more people are giving up hope in recent times with all the factories closing, major retailer closing, unemployment at incredibly high levels (U6, not official statistics) and massive debt from student loans?

Sanddancer 10y ago
Recessions on average happen every 8-10 years or so. There was a recession in 91-92, one in 81-82, etc. That part of the business cycle is pretty cyclical.

throw2016 10y ago

Whoa! What a depressing thread. From the thread one would conclude this is not a country but a collection of economic interests. Hopefully this dry soulless perspective is limited to a small technical group in the bay area. You will simply not got this level of callousness in any country with a sense of a 'collective history and shared existence'. Sure there is 'callousness' in many places but there is also a sense it is wrong. Here some seem to have not only shed the sense of guilt or collective existence but celebrate their lack of empathy. No wonder this is the only country that takes rand seriously.

gragas 10y ago
>No wonder this is the only country that takes rand seriously. Most of the people who show no empathy to rural America are actually extremely left, self-righteous city dwellers who hate Rand. I often get the feeling that most left-leaning people who don't show empathy towards rural America are actually only left-leaning because that's the "morally correct" stance. Evidently, they don't care at all about others and will take every chance they can get---that is, every situation in which it is socially and politically acceptable for leftists---to feel superior. I'm not saying the right has any more empathy. I'm not saying the world needs more or less Rand.

patrickg_zill 10y ago

You can fix rural areas by leaving them alone. But it has to actually alone. I mean, get rid of the residential building code and any zoning restrictions on house construction. It used to be that a man or man and wife could build a new house for themselves, but the city regulations have been exported wholesale to the rural areas, and the expense of subdivision of land drives up land prices. So now it is virtually impossible to bootstrap by saving a lot of money by buying a few cheap acres and building a small house: everything has to permitted and to specification, reducing the comparative advantage that should be present.

boomboomsubban 10y ago

I'm not saying it explains all of the rise, but I wonder how much of this is more accurate reporting. I'm from rural America, and people dying of a "gun malfunction" or similar accidental deaths was a common thing. Nobody local was confused, but protecting the family was a large concern.

bougiefever 10y ago

I was just commenting to a friend of mine that the trend towards remote workers may reverse the shrinking of small towns. Not everyone wants to live in a big city, and if they can work for a company that is not located there, some will prefer smaller towns. Making sure that all of American has broadband will be as important as RFD was in the day to preserve our rural areas. For those who don't know what RFD is, it is Rural Free Delivery, and it meant that people in rural areas didn't have to pay to have their mail delivered. It completely revitalized the rural areas. Sears & Roebuck prospered because they could sell to the whole country. Today, broadband internet access is needed for everyone. I live in a rural area, and reliable, fast broadband has just become available. I have a remote job, and broadband makes it possible for me to stay living here. I can see where pockets of remote tech workers would want to live in the same place, maybe having a co-working place to go to. I have a co-working office I use several days a week that is all technical workers. It's the perfect balance for me between being home all the time, and having an office with other remote workers to work with. If people can live in these communities with an income that is middle class, they will help the communities to prosper, which may help reverse the trend towards suicide and drug use. I sometimes eat at the restaurants and shop in the stores of my small town. Our insurance agents and lawyers are there, and we do our banking there. Having real opportunities to maybe open a store, or work at the insurance office for the residents there might help their lives improve. My cousin's son died of a heroin overdose, and he was the nicest, funnest guy. Everyone loved him. Do city people think that those who are suffering are just losers who deserve their fate? That is simply not true. Many have families who love them, and the potential to have a good life, but heroin is such a strong addiction. They need help, not condemnation. I think the de-criminalizing it is essential to solving the crisis. My cousin's son would maybe have survived and gotten help if his friends would have brought him to an ER. I think they were afraid of getting arrested and having their place raided by police, and they rationalized that he would probably be ok by morning. If they didn't have the threat of legal problems over their heads, they might have called 911 when he was unresponsive. Instead, they decided to wait it out, and he died. These are not easy problems to solve, and it will require people to challenge their ideas about who needs fast internet, and who the people affected by the heroin epidemic are.

therpe1 10y ago

anovikov 10y ago

When i was young, we were taught that Americans are used to moving and this is the main reason why America is rich: people easily pack up and move to where the opportunities are, so businesses don't starve without workers and people don't sit in the dirt in the hopeless places for the rest of their lives. It is strange to see that this seems to be no longer true and people feel so attached to literally hopeless places they found themselves in.

lazulicurio 10y ago
Armchair hypothesizing: increased use of consumer debt[1] to purchase housing and transportation, combined with modern technology that makes it increasingly difficult to avoid debt collection[2], puts a severe damper on peoples' ability to move and find a "fresh start". [1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/households-debt-to-gdp http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/households-deb... [2] Or any negative PR that happens to be recorded in the annals of google for all eternity
- anovikov 10y ago
  Very good point. I have thought for a long time that the whole fake economy where people seem able to buy things they can't actually afford must backfire in some way. And so it does. Maybe solution is change in legislation that will scrap the mortgage industry, and make sure people buy properties in cash, or not at all? For example, don't make mortgage interest tax-free, enforce harder criteria for mortgage takers (like, no mortgage loan can be for over 50% of property value or 100% of pre-tax annual income of the buyer's household?). Yes most people will become renters for life, as they are in Europe, but at least this problem will be solved.
  - pm90 10y ago
    How will it solve this problem, really? This will funnel money into the hands of landlords. A lot of people will lose the only equity that they have. Wall street will get even more money to blow away... What you call fake economy is actually pretty real, yes its maybe not used responsibly by a lot of people. But lets remember this: while a lot of rural folks are feeling the pain (quite literally, looking at the opiod epidemic) the American economy as a whole is doing pretty fantastic. A ton of people are comfortably building equity in their homes.

wtbob 10y ago

> "People in the cities" (who tend to be strongly left-leaning) literally want to give money to the less well-off people in rural areas to help support them. It's more accurate to say that they want to give other people's money to the less-well-off. I don't know that it's terribly empathetic to use violence to take someone else's wealth and give it to another in order to get warm fuzzies or votes. Last night, I went to a banquet for an organisation which is (AFAIK) entirely funded voluntarily, and which helps folks in crises (natural and man-made disasters, e.g. hurricanes, earthquakes and wars) all over the world, regardless of creed. They only spend 8% of their revenue on fundraising, which I think is pretty good. I voluntarily wrote them a cheque, and was glad to do it. The moral calculus would be completely different had I voted to send armed agents to raid your bank account and give those funds to the organisation.

gipp 10y ago
So, I am not a libertarian, but I do think the libertarian wing of this country does sometimes have good points and provide a valuable alternative perspective on some issues. BUT, you guys have really got to stop this godawful stupid "point of a gun" rhetoric you're all cribbing directly from Atlas Shrugged. Yes, I understand the metaphor you are trying to make, but it is a profoundly terrible way to make that argument and needlessly escalates every discussion and alienates anyone not already on your side instantly.
- wtbob 10y ago
  > BUT, you guys have really got to stop this godawful stupid "point of a gun" rhetoric you're all cribbing directly from Atlas Shrugged. I've never read Atlas Shrugged. We pay our taxes because if we don't, armed men will try to arrest us, and if we resist them then they will kill us. Violence is the ultimate backstop of any law. That's fine: we need laws, and we need taxes. But let's try to ensure that we threaten & use violence as little as is reasonable. I think it was P.J. O'Rourke who suggested asking oneself, for any law, if one would wave a gun at one's grandmother to force her to comply. Laws against murder and theft? Sure, grandma had better not do that. Taxes to prevent people starving on the streets? Sure, grandma had better cough up. Laws against selling soup in one's home, or taxes to fund cowboy poetry festivals? Somehow I just can't see pointing a gun at grandma for that.

dibanez 10y ago

Without belittling the difficulties of rural areas, it seems just as concerning to me that all the lines in this plot are trending upward.

pharrington 10y ago

Pretty nice correlation between this and the advent of OxyContin.

user5994461 10y ago

> Ask yourself if you had said that about other issues in America. 'Why can't black people just start learning how to code to catch up?' Asians do that just fine. No excuse for Blacks.

infosample 10y ago
But maybe a reason.
dang 10y ago
Posting unsubstantively about a divisive topic makes for a bad HN comment. Please don't do this. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13905407 and marked it off-topic.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I note that they attribute suicide to 'lingering effects of the great recession' although they show no spike in suicides around the great recession, just a steady increase. The 'elephant' in this particular room is that America has been involved in a prolonged military engagement in the middle east, nearly continuously since 2001. Further, the military and the national guard, tend to draw on young people from rural areas disproportionately because of the otherwise lack of opportunity to work. As a result we have sent over a million young people into war and then dumped them back into their home towns when they chose not to re-enlist or where discharged for other reasons. They commit suicide at a rate of 20 a day[1]. Take them out of the trend lines and see how that affects your analysis. [1] http://www.militarytimes.com/story/veterans/2016/07/07/va-suicide-20-daily-research/86788332/ http://www.militarytimes.com/story/veterans/2016/07/07/va-su...

malandrew 10y ago
Excellent point. I'm also curious about comparing the demographic that enlisted with the equivalent demographic cohort that stayed home in terms of age, educational attainment and socioeconomic status. Was the military the only hope they had for employment or did those that stayed home prosper economically and do generally well.
- Kalium 10y ago
  Military service is almost never the only option, but it's often the best one for those who come back OK. Economic opportunity, travel, access to education, and social status in one package? That's a combination that's otherwise difficult to come by in rural Appalachia.
curtis 10y ago
From the article: > And roughly 65 percent of all veteran suicides in 2014 were for individuals 50 years or older, many of whom spent little or no time fighting in the most recent wars. The recent wars may have had a measurable impact, but I don't think it's the primary reason. It should also be noted that you absolutely should expect the veteran suicide rate to be larger than the suicide rate of the country as a whole for the very simple reason that suicide rates are higher in the U.S. for men and veterans are disproportionately male. This article from FiveThirtyEight is well worth a read in my opinion: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/suicide-in-the-military/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/suicide-in-the-military... The tag line from that article: > When service members die by suicide, their deaths look a lot like civilian suicides — the same people, the same risk predictors, and the same means.

taivare 10y ago

I just read a tweet , that 1 of 5 given a 10 day supply of opiates will go on to abuse it. I worked midnight shift in a big pharma chain in rural US. I have seen 1st hand the damage the pill mills from (rural doctors )our having on our rural populations. They have lost their jobs to NAFTA. I was able to get them to stop selling brass pot scrubbies ,go (plastic) junkies would use for screens. You could tell when they came in for the scrubbies, the checks came out the dealers knew when to peddle. One of docs had a thriving Buis. Local doc - highschool phys.- slum landlord (shell co.) and a pill mill for a day job ! ps. one junkie was selling pils $15 a pop he said & that 8yrs back ; said it took 20min lick coating off ; for grind & snort . . sad !

averroes 10y ago

This is consistent with Ann Case and Angus Deaton's work on rising mortality rates in the US outside of major metro areas, especially among adults without college degrees. Rising all-cause mortality rates, not just suicides, have already become the rule for many of these places. Many comments here mention opioid overdoses, and it's notable that, just as with opioid deaths and hospitalizations, rising mortality rates are distributed across almost all groups. But they are by far most severe among whites, who are in their late working years (~45-65 years old), and who live outside of major metro areas. (Education data are not included in this report but it's probably a safe bet that we are disproportionately discussing the un-degreed.) Yet, if you look at the CDC's data on suicide methods, only a small portion of the increase is explained by drug overdose suicides. Drug suicides are up markedly, but they remain only about one-seventh of the total and one-third of the increase. Instead, the largest increase is in deaths by hanging/suffocation/strangulation, which is twice as large in raw terms as the increase in deaths by drug overdoses. Suffocation, not drug overdoses, is the main reason why non-firearms suicide deaths have become as common as firearms suicide deaths. What does this tell us? Well, for one thing, people who suffocate themselves are frequently people who don't have access to firearms or lethal drugs - or who aren't familiar with them. Anyone who wants to understand rising rates of suicide should look especially carefully at why Americans are now suffocating themselves at a much higher rate.

norea-armozel 10y ago

I think the biggest reason for this trend is the decline in health and human services across the various states which have large rural populations because it's been the politically expedient thing to do when budget crises happen because it's assumed they rural pops will just move to the big city and get the services there. Little do they realize that takes MONEY. So, when you're dealing with the same economic downturns which cause the budget crises also lead to underemployment and unemployment you're not going to see many of those folks move because they have no money or very little of it. Ultimately, there needs to be an honest discussion among the rank and file of the American conservative movements on these matters. Specifically, they need to acknowledge that their whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality isn't working and that a whole new program needs to be adopted. Specifically one that acknowledges that Randian/Right-Libertarian approaches are dead ends in terms of sustainability. Whether they like it or not they need to accept that there needs to be some level of welfare in government especially now when the greatest disruption to employment opportunities are ahead of us (not behind us). We can't assume there will be plentiful well paying jobs that can/will emerge in the rural sections of the US. We need to assume the opposite as distance is costly to most industries and there's barely an operable infrastructure to support building up those rural parts of the country (especially when it comes to the Internet-based IT jobs). If there's anything they should do I think an infrastructure bill that focuses on getting Internet access and education programs out to the rural parts of the country would be a good first step on top of rebuilding and augmenting existing welfare programs.