The effect of staying at home on suicide during the COVID-19 pandemic

Yoko Ibuka, Haruo Kakehi, Ryuki Kobayashi and Ryo Nakajima
Additional contact information
Haruo Kakehi: Faculty of Economics, Keio University
Ryuki Kobayashi: Faculty of Economics, Keio University
Ryo Nakajima: Faculty of Economics, Keio University

No 2024-004, Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University

Abstract: Studies have reported a strong association between policy stringency and mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic, primarily among females, but the causal effect of people's stay-at-home behavior on mental health is not yet known. This study evaluated how pandemic-related confinement at home affected the incidence of suicide among Japanese females. We employ a shift-share IV design, assessing whether differential exposure to the pandemic shock led to changes in the outcome variable. We found that suicide increased among females under 20 years old as more people stayed at home. The results are robust across different model specifications. Counterfactual analyses show that at least 37% of suicides in the demographic group can be attributed to home confinement. Our results suggest that a substantial part of the observed increase in suicide rates among female children and adolescents was driven by lifestyle changes during the pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Mental health; Lockdown; Shift-share IV; Specification curve analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H12 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2024-02-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ies.keio.ac.jp/upload/DP2024-004_EN.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:keo:dpaper:2024-004

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University ().