Want to lower suicide rates? Raise the minimum wage by $1, new study says

A new study says that raising the minimum wage by $1 would result in a 3.4% to 5.9% drop in suicide rates among adults with a high school education or less.

The study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, looked at monthly data, for the 50 states and Washington, D.C., between 1990 and 2015 and included federal and state minimum wages, changes in minimum wage by state, and unemployment rates.

The authors of the study found that there was a bigger effect with raising the minimum wage among higher unemployment levels.

“People with a high school education or less are more likely to work at minimum wage or close to minimum wage and are therefore affected by increases in minimum wage,” John Kaufman, a student at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and one of the authors of the study, told FastCompany.

“Meaning they’re more likely to work at a job that is having its wages increased by those laws, compared to people with a college degree or more who are less likely to be working at a job where the pay is affected by a minimum wage increase.”

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death and has been rising in almost every state, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 and has not gone up since July 2009, according to CBS News.

The local minimum wage increased in nearly half of the 50 states as of Jan. 1, and the Fight for 15 movement continues to advocate for raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.