THE IMPACT OF SAME-SEX MARRIAGE LEGALIZATION ON STATE SUICIDE RATES

In this 5-part Jupyter Notebook series, I conduct an analysis in Python examining the impact of state-level marriage equality on state suicides rates for males 18 and younger—a proxy measure of the wellbeing of arguable the most at-risk population by LGBT discriminatory policies. The average state suicide rate for males 18 and younger is hypothesized to decline with legalization of marriage equality and I find robust evidence supporting this hypothesis. The findings signal that institutionalized discrimination negatively affects the wellbeing of disadvantaged individuals so that working towards social justice has measurable positive implications for the public.

INTRODUCTION, DATA AND METHODS

Notebook 1 motivates the reasoning behind the analysis, describes the data and data sources. I also overview the differences-in-differences (DiD) econometric strategy and note its limitations.

SUMMARY STATISTICS

Notebook 2 tabulates and graphically depicts summary statistics for outcome and explanatory variables.

DIFFERENCES-IN-DIFFERENCES ANALYSIS

Notebook 3 contains the DiD analysis for all states as well as states that legalized same-sex marriage by court decision only.

DIFFERENCES-IN-DIFFERENCES WITH STATE-SPECIFIC LINEAR TIME TRENDS ANALYSIS

Notebook 4 contains the DiD with state-specific linear time trends analysis for all states as well as states that legalized marriage equality by court decision only. Adding state-specific linear time trends to the previous analysis attempts to further mitigate endogeneity.

INTERPRETATION AND FINAL REMARKS

Notebook 5 discusses results and further extensions.