[Puffer Fish]

With high housing costs in many parts of the U.S., the younger generation has been under increasing financial pressure and stress.
How has this manifested in the younger generation? Might we see indicators such as increased suicide rates and drug overdoses in the statistics?

The homicide rate for older U.S. teenagers rose to its highest point in nearly 25 years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the suicide rate for adults in their early 20s was the worst in more than 50 years.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report examined the homicide and suicide rates among 10- to 24-year-olds from 2001 to 2021.

Suicide and homicide death rates remained far higher for older teenagers and young adults than they were for 10- to 14-year-olds.
Among 20- to 24-year-olds, the homicide death rate jumped 34% from 2019 to 2020. It held stable in 2021, but the suicide rate rose enough in 2021 to surpass the homicide rate.
​
Gen Z homicides hit 25-year high during COVID - and the suicide rate was the worst in over 50 years, CDC study says Mike Stobbe, Associated Press, June 15, 2023
https://fortune.com/well/2023/06/15/gen ... cdc-study/

There's been a marked uptick in so-called deaths of despair--those involving drugs, alcohol or suicide--among millennials over the last decade, according to a report released by public-health groups Trust for America's Health and Well Being Trust.
Drug, alcohol and suicide deaths have risen in nearly every age group over the last decade, but the increase has been especially pronounced for younger Americans. Between 2007 and 2017, drug-related deaths increased by 108% among adults ages 18 to 34, while alcohol-related deaths increased by 69% and suicides increased by 35%, according to the report, which drew on Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. All together, about 36,000 millennials died "deaths of despair" in 2017, with fatal drug overdoses being the biggest driver.

But the report argues that there are also a number of generation-specific factors that are plaguing millennials, including financial stressors stemming from student loan debt, health care and high housing costs. Social support may also be lacking for millennials, as fewer people take part in faith- and community-based organizations and more people delay marriage. These issues can contribute to mental health conditions, and younger Americans report higher rates of depression and anxiety than previous generations.​

More Millennials Are Dying 'Deaths of Despair,' Report Says - Time Magazine, Jamie Ducharme, June 13, 2019
https://time.com/5606411/millennials-deaths-of-despair/

Americans aged 25 to 44 -- so-called millennials -- are dying at significantly higher rates from three leading killers than similarly aged people just 10 years ago, the latest government data shows. Looking at data collected between 2000 and 2020, the new report from the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) finds the biggest jump in deaths from injuries, heart disease and suicide occurred after 2019, when the pandemic began.

For suicides -- the third leading killer of people aged 25 to 44 -- rates rose sharply during the past few years among Black and Hispanic Americans, but not White people, the report found.
Both Black and Hispanic Americans had seen a long period of relative "stability" in suicide rates since 2000, the researchers noted. However, beginning in 2014 and continuing through 2020, suicides rose by 44% among Black millennials.
Suicides rose even more sharply -- by 55% -- among Hispanic Americans between 2013 and 2020, the new report found.
The pattern was different for White millennials, however. While suicide rates in that group did rise by 47% between 2000 and 2017, rates after 2017 "did not change significantly through 2020.​

Deaths from injuries, heart disease, suicide rise among millennials, Ernie Mundell, HealthDay News, November 16, 2022
https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/11 ... 668608454/

The State of the Nation's Housing 2023 report published by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies has revealed that a record number of American renters are facing difficulties in paying their rent. According to the study, a staggering 21.6 million households are spending more than one-third of their income on rent, with some even paying up to 50% of their earnings towards their apartments. This situation is alarming as housing experts recommend that tenants should spend less than 30% of their income on rent.​

THE STATE OF THE NATION'S HOUSING 2023 (harvard.edu)
https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/defa ... g_2023.pdf

In 2021, suicide and homicide rates for children and young adults ages 10 to 24 in the US were the highest they’ve been in decades, according to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicide and homicide were the second and third leading causes of death for this age group. The homicide rate for this age group in 2021 was the highest it's been since 1997, and the suicide rate was the highest on record, since 1968. Suicide rates surpassed homicide rates for this age group in 2010 and have continued rising for the past decade. But a large spike in homicide rates during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic brought the rates for both types of violent death together for the first time in a decade. For children ages 10 to 14, however, a large gap remained. The suicide rate in 2021 was twice as high as the homicide rate, according to the CDC report.​

Youth, young adults are dying from suicide and homicide at highest rates in decades, CDC report says, Deidre McPhillips, CNN, June 15, 2023
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/15/health/y ... index.html

Between 2014 and 2017, rates of depression among millennials surged by 31%​
related thread: lingering effects of Recession showing up in Millennial generation's health (posted in North America section, 09 Nov 2019 )

[Puffer Fish]

In Australia:

Young adults throughout the country are battling worsening housing affordability, with nearly two-thirds (62%) of young adults still living at home saying they cannot afford to move out, according to CoreLogic's Perceptions of Housing Affordability Report 2017.
The report, which was conducted by Galaxy Research, reveals the emergence of an increasingly dependent generation. Prospects are so dim that 21% of those aged 18 or over said they expect to remain with their parents until they're at least 30 years old.

"Protracted affordability pressures means the outlook is bleak for many young people who want to fly the nest, so parents and their offspring need to be increasingly resourceful and innovative in the way they approach this challenge," Lisa Claes, CEO of CoreLogic, said.

While 62% of respondents said having a well-paid job is the best means of getting onto the property ladder, 30% said they are holding out for an inheritance to help them purchase their first home, or are relying on some assistance from their family.​

More young adults can't afford to move out, Michael Mata, May 26, 2017, yourinvestmentpropertymag.com
https://www.yourinvestmentpropertymag.c ... o-move-out

[Godstud]

“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

We've had a lot of good times...

[Puffer Fish]

Youth suicide rates rose 62% from 2007 to 2021

Youth suicide rates rose 62% from 2007 to 2021: 'People feel hopeless,' one recent grad says , Aditi Shrikant, CNBC - Psychology and Relationships, Dec 5, 2023

Last year, suicide rates in the U.S. were the highest they had been since 1941, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During the last two decades, youth suicide has increased significantly. From 2007 through 2021, suicide rates for Americans ages 10 to 24 rose 62%, according to the CDC.

With tuition rates and cost of living skyrocketing, kids across the social and economic spectrum feel more pressure to be financially or professionally successful and less optimistic they'll be able to exceed their parents.

In Palo Alto, California, where the average household income is $200,000, the youth suicide rate was four times higher than it was nationally, according to a 2016 report.

Selective universities are common sites of suicide. In 2017, five Columbia University students died by suicide within the first academic semester. In 2014 and 2015, suicide rates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology surpassed the national average, which was about 13 deaths per year.

"The rate of suicides among young adults has been much higher than it has been historically compared to the '80s or '70s," says Carl Fleischer, co-director and medical director of the Boston Child Study Center-Los Angeles. Fleischer is a child and adolescent psychiatrist.

"Parents think getting their kid into a good college can act as a life vest in a sea of economic uncertainty. But what I found in my reporting is that life vest is acting like a leaded vest and drowning the kids they are trying to protect."

But the challenges young adults in the 1970s or 1980s faced were far less rigorous, she says.
"Life was generally more affordable, health care was more affordable, higher education was more affordable. There was more slack in the system. A child could make some errors, have some time to try things and drop things. There wasn't this focus on early childhood success."​


It seems like economic pressures, and additionally academic pressures, trying to compensate for those economic worries, are driving this increasing suicide trend.

[Puffer Fish]

Someone in another thread brought up an interesting hypothesis, a possible explanation.

I'll share their comments here:

"Youth and small children have been targeted by pedo-grooming leftists as they push their agenda onto them. They took a mental illness that was virtually non-existent in children (and extremely rare in adults) and turned it into a mainstream crisis. OF COURSE the children in this country are suffering...by design."


The rise in suicide rate might not be entirely economic. A part of it could have to do with the recent phenomena of older teen and young adult transgenderism, the rate of which has shot up over 100-fold over the last 15 years.

About 5% of young adults in U.S. are transgender or "non-binary" , according to a survey from Pew Research Center.
About 5% of young adults in the U.S. say their gender is different from their sex assigned at birth, Anna Brown, Pew Research Center, June 7, 2022


To try to get some idea whether this could be a possible explanation, I did some basic calculations (rough estimate) that show that the rise in transgender rates could be responsible for as much as a 44% suicide increase among young adults.

the basic assumptions that went into that calculation were the following:
1.2 million transgender young adults, 21.64 million young adults in U.S., 8 times higher suicide rate

[Unthinking Majority]

Increasing moral chaos since the 1960's and ever-increasing. You need some chaos for change and progress to occur. But when you murder God and burn the traditional mores then "nothing is true, everything is permitted". Moral confusion isn't fun. And with positive changes often also comes unintended negative consequences. Ie: Divorces free women from abuse, but children grow up in broken families.

[froggo]

it seems rather that not everyone is a dumb brainwashed idiot, and that depression and despair arise not because there is a deep dissatisfaction on what ones financial prospects will look like in the future (that's a rather superficial ambition, which even when attained guarantees no happiness), but rather, the sadness stems from the plain-as-fuck to see hate and manipulation which is occurring all around. Look at the fucking way people talk and assert dominance of dogma, its enough to send anyone over the edge feel the hopelessness; when all they want to do is sing and dance and be joyous, but people are screaming (mouths full of spit, eyes like the devil) at them to make a bunch of god-fearing babies.