Funding: Smith Richardson Foundation
Summary: What are the correlates of suicide among blacks and whites? One body of literature suggests that structural factors such as poverty, inequality, joblessness, and family disruption are the key contributors while another literature considers the availability of firearms to be the central factor. No studies have thoroughly explored both of these possibilities together and thus we know little about the relative contributions of motivation to commit suicide due to structural conditions and opportunity to commit suicide due to firearm availability. The current research addresses this issue. We examine the roles of motivation and opportunity in shaping suicide rates among young white and young black males in U.S. cities using suicide data from Mortality Multiple Cause of Death Records and 2000 Census data. We find racial differences in the predictors of suicide; although concentrated disadvantage directly affects suicide among young white males, it only raises levels for young black males by increasing their access to firearms. This finding is confirmed in additional analyses, which examine the effects of concentrated disadvantage on black and white gun and non-gun suicides separately. The findings have important implications for the study of race and suicide.