The association of COVID-19 employment shocks with suicide and safety net use: An early-stage investigation.

This paper examines whether the COVID-19-induced employment shocks are associated with increases in suicides and safety net use in the second and third quarters of 2020. We exploit plausibly exogenous regional variation in the magnitude of the employment shocks in Japan and adopt a difference-in-differences research design to examine and control for possible confounders. Our preferred point estimates suggest that a one-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate in the second quarter of 2020 is associated with, approximately, an additional 0.52 suicides, 28 unemployment benefit recipients, 88 recipients of a temporary loan program, and 10 recipients of public assistance per 100,000 population per month. A simple calculation based on these estimates suggests that if a region experienced a one-percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate caused by the COVID-19 crisis in the second quarter of 2020, which is roughly equivalent to the third-highest regional employment shock, this would be associated with 37.4%, 60.5%, and 26.5% increases in the total, female, and male suicide rates respectively in July 2020 compared with July 2019. These results are primarily correlational rather than causal due to the limitation of our data and research design, but our baseline findings are robust to several different model specifications.

FISCAL RESPONSES TO THE COVID-19 CRISIS IN JAPAN: THE FIRST SIX MONTHS

This paper provides an overview of the Japanese government's response to the COVID-19 crisis in terms of the fiscal measures taken between January and June 2020. As the crisis intensified, the government passed emergency budgets with a total value exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product. One of the main programs was an unconditional cash transfer for households in the amount of 100,000 JPY (i.e., 909 USD) per resident. In addition, to prevent layoffs and bankruptcies, the government created and expanded various loan and subsidy programs to support firms and workers. Other existing social programs and local economic policies are also reviewed.