Characteristics of and Variation in Suicide Mortality Related to Retirement During the Great Recession: Perspectives From the National Violent Death Reporting System.

Abstract

Background and objectives: Suicide rates typically increase during recessions. However, few studies have explored how recessions affect risk among older adults nearing retirement. This study used a large suicide mortality registry to characterize and quantify suicide related to retirement during the Great Recession (GR).

Research design and methods: Data come from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS, 2004-2017; N = 53,298 suicide deaths age ≥50). We analyzed the text narratives (i.e., descriptions of the most salient circumstances to each suicide) of these decedents using natural language processing (NLP) to identify cases that were "retirement-related" (RR, e.g., anticipating, being unable to, or recently retiring). We used time-series analysis to quantify variation in RR over the GR, and compared these trends to retirees (i.e., decedents whose occupation was "retired") and all decedents aged ≥50. We used content and network analysis to characterize themes represented in the narratives.

Results: There were 878 RR cases (1.6% of suicides aged ≥50) identified by the NLP model; only 52% of these cases were among retirees. RR cases were younger (62 vs 75 years) and more educated (41.5% vs 24.5% college degree) than retirees. The rate of RR suicide was positively associated with indicators of the GR (e.g., short-term unemployment R2 = 0.70, p = .024), but economic indicators were not correlated with the suicide rate among retirees or older adults in general. Economic issues were more central to the narratives of RR cases during the GR compared to other periods.

Discussion and implications: Recessions shape suicide risk related to retirement transitions.