It looks like most of the data is from relatively recent, smaller, recessions.
Did you look into the consequences of much bigger economic upheavals, like the great depression, any? Since there’s some risk that the covid crisis could cause a much bigger recession than anything recent it would be interesting to know if these could have outsized effects.
• The Russia-suicides result may point in that direction, since the collapse of the USSR was a much larger crisis than—and there was a large increase in suicides.
I specifically looked into the smaller recessions and not the Great Depression because it’s just too weird. I think you might be right that this one will approach it, but before I look into the Great Depression I want to check out the 1970s oil shocks, which share with the present the common feature that they were caused by an actual thing changing, rather than financial tools misfiring. The Great Depression is also just so well known relative to the smaller recessions (although the Great Recession also has a lot of material on it).
Very interesting overview!
It looks like most of the data is from relatively recent, smaller, recessions.
Did you look into the consequences of much bigger economic upheavals, like the great depression, any? Since there’s some risk that the covid crisis could cause a much bigger recession than anything recent it would be interesting to know if these could have outsized effects.
• The Russia-suicides result may point in that direction, since the collapse of the USSR was a much larger crisis than—and there was a large increase in suicides.
• Also, here’s mention of a ~20% increase in US suicides in 1932 compared to 1928: https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2011/04/suicide-rates-rise-and-fall-economy-say-cdc-researchers/
Further, from skimming the “great depression” wikipedia article it’s notable that a lot of regime change happened during that era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression#Socio-economic_effects
That may be another important consequence of large recessions to look into.
I specifically looked into the smaller recessions and not the Great Depression because it’s just too weird. I think you might be right that this one will approach it, but before I look into the Great Depression I want to check out the 1970s oil shocks, which share with the present the common feature that they were caused by an actual thing changing, rather than financial tools misfiring. The Great Depression is also just so well known relative to the smaller recessions (although the Great Recession also has a lot of material on it).