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Crémieux

Jun 1, 2023 • 8 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X

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American military veterans have a suicide problem.

Some have theorized the reason is deployment-related trauma.

Leveraging the random assignment of new soldiers to units with different deployment cycles, Bruhn et al. found that was wrong.

Deployment did not increase suicides.

Looking only at violent deployments (ones with peer casualties), there aren't noncombat mortality effects either.

What explains veteran suicide rates?

The reason seems to be that the proposition is wrong: veterans do not have increased suicide risk.

This may seem surprising, but it's not. Their suicide rates are elevated over the general population because most of them are young White men. That group has a suicide issue.

There are good and bad parts to this observation.

On the one hand, it means that there is not selection of suicidal people into the military.

On the other, demographic selection makes this problem into one that agencies like the VA will probably not be able to fix on their own

because it's not a soldier problem, it's a young White male problem.

I don't know how this can be fixed, but presumably tackling opiate use would help.

Soliman (2022) found that DEA crackdowns on overprescribing pharmacies resulted in fewer local suicide deaths.

Soliman also found that sanctioning specific doctors affected opioid-related mortality more generally without impacting suicide rates. Effects were generally larger for males than females and they were larger for people aged 30-49 than those aged 15-29 or 85+. No race data.

Kennedy-Hendricks et al. found that Florida's pill mill crackdown reduced opioid overdose mortality considerably.

Their supplement contained details on the characteristics of the people who died from opioid overdoses, but I wasn't able to access it.

Regardless, this problem can

probably be helped to some degree.

Sources:

nber.org/papers/w30622

fivethirtyeight.com/features/suici…

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.21…

More:

bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/resear…

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Crémieux

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Nov 4

What do studies say about "freezing the rent"?

Let's have a thread🧵

First thing's first: Most studies agree that rent controlled units have lower rents, but also the supply of rentable units goes down and un-controlled units see their rents increase.

Uh-oh!

Rent control also means that fewer homes get built, and it means that housing quality drops.

After all, if you can't raise the rent, what incentive do you have to make everything sparkly and neat?

Rent control lowers residential mobility, meaning people stay put longer

That's not good because it causes misallocation

Consider an elderly family whose kids left the nest. They should move to a smaller place, but rent control keeps them in place, so new families can't move in

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Nov 3

https://twitter.com/SimoneSyed/status/1985401799931548148

I'm not taking a stance on whether inflammation drives cancer, but I will say it's very true that GLP-1 drugs reduce inflammation—a lot!

Tirzepatide at any dose greatly reduced levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, two important inflammation markers:

https://twitter.com/SimoneSyed/status/1985401799931548148

https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1952412061322940628

I have actually had people thank me for getting them on this stuff precisely because they had inflammation issues that these drugs *immediately* solved for them.

Here's an example I've posted before: this man's back pain was cured!

https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1952412061322940628

Source: link.springer.com/article/10.100…

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Crémieux

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Oct 31

The CDC's new Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) didn't put out immunization guidance for 2025-26.

So some researchers got together and did the government's job for them. Here's what they found🧵

First, the RSV vaccine is great for preventing hospitalization!

The next thing up is the flu vaccine.

These are still showing a touch lower efficacy than in previous years, but they're still

(1) good
(2) worth it
(3) even more worth it for infants and children

Then we have the COVID vaccines, which still seem to be useful enough to save a lot of lives.

These are also still better for the old.

That's good!

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Crémieux

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Oct 27

How rich are American workers?

Very!

After accounting for taxes, transfers, cost of living differences and so on, American workers make far more than their counterparts across the OECD.

Is this just because Americans work more?

No. That has something to do with it for some comparisons, but it's not everything.

Americans are also more productive and they get to take home more of what they earn.

This is an update on the 2021 numbers I previously presented here: x.com/cremieuxrecuei…, x.com/cremieuxrecuei…, x.com/cremieuxrecuei…

When we have 2024 numbers or later numbers, I'll update to those. But we have to wait on the OECD to release that data, so until then, enjoy!

Here's the old style plots if you want those:

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Crémieux

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Oct 27

Wow!

Across basically all of Europe, people at higher income levels are now *more likely* to become parents!

This is a stunning shift!

Among men, this relationship goes a while back now, and in several places, the income gradient has gotten more extreme.

Among women, there are some recent crossover events, where the low-income used to be more likely parents than the rich, but now it's different.

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Crémieux

@cremieuxrecueil

Oct 26

Wolf packs are remarkably good at respecting each other's established borders.

The project this data is from sometimes releases videos of how this plays out.

For example, here's a video of this playing out for a few wolves over a single day in Spring.

Alternatively, about 10-20% of wolf populations lack a pack. They're "lone wolves" and they're more likely to just wander across the territory of different packs

But this isn't permanent! Apparently this one eventually joined a pack and changed his long-distance traveling habit!