Unemployment and social problems in the post-war United States

This paper examines the impact of unemployment on social problems in the post-war United States. Working within a conceptual framework derived from sociological and economic theory, dynamic macro social indicator models are constructed for four social problems-rates of suicide, homicide, divorce and alcoholism. In general, the results do not indicate a strong and consistent relationship between the unemployment rate and these social problems. High or increasing unemployment rates tend to raise the suicide rate, but lower the alcoholism rate and have no appreciable effect on the divorce rate. High levels of unemployment lower the homicide rate, but increases in unemployment tend to raise it. For all social problems except the divorce rate, the level of economic inequality has a consistently positive influence.