Suicide rates are on the rise in the twenty-first century, and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and I have been exchanging thoughts on exactly why. On Sunday, Douthat attributed the rise to cultural factors such as “the retreat from family obligations" and "from civic and religious participation.” I counter-rgued that although many of these trends are troubling, the decline of traditional institutions, and particularly marriage and religion, isn’t clearly responsible for increasing suicide rates. Douthat replied that my piece “did not prove that social belonging doesn’t play a role in suicide rates.” He’s right, but I wasn't taking issue with his entire argument: I never questioned the relationship between suicide and belongingness, just whether traditional institutions, like marriage and religion, guard against suicide. The data suggests otherwise—that long-term economic trends have the greatest influence on national suicide rates.

Douthat makes the assumption that relatively religious or traditional communities have lower suicide rates. But suicide rates aren't much higher than they were in the mid-20th century, despite imbalanced economic growth and the decline of the traditional family and of religious affiliation. The state-level data also complicates that convenient cultural explanation. Suicide rates are highest in the West, where marriage rates are quite high, and depression is highest in the Bible Belt. That doesn’t mean that religion or marriage don't, or can’t, play a role in reducing suicide. Who knows: Maybe suicide rates would be even higher in the Deep South if religion weren’t comforting a poor, unhealthy, and depressed population. Perhaps New York would be suicide-free without rampant secularism.

Part of why this discussion is difficult is the danger of an ecological fallacy, where group data can mislead about individual behavior. Douthat, for instance, cited a study on religion and suicide that found that active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who live in Utah are far less likely to commit suicide than non-members or inactive members. But, paradoxically, Utah had the tenth-highest suicide rate in 2010, closer to the sinful state of Nevada's than the national average. If, in fact, religious people are less likely to commit suicide, then why would Utah have both high levels of religious participation and a high suicide rate? Perhaps the explanation relates to Utah's low population density or high gun ownership, which correlate with higher suicide rates. If Utah’s gun ownership rate was as low as New York’s, maybe the suicide rate would be extremely low. Or maybe religious communities are alienating to non-members: Non-Mormons in Utah have a very high suicide rate, even though their LDS counterparts are slightly less likely to commit suicide than the national average.

Regardless of the explanation, it is hardly clear that traditional communities with nuclear families and high church attendance reduce the risk of suicide. That’s relevant to the question raised by Douthat’s piece: whether the decline of traditional communities and social relationships ensures that suicide rates will continue to increase. Moreover, if we’re interested in what types of communities—and what type of country—reduces suicide, then the geography is quite relevant, perhaps even more relevant than recent trends. After all, there’s a 30 percent difference between suicide rates among middle-aged men today and a decade ago, but there’s a 300 percent difference in suicide rates between Wyoming and New York.

Now consider the county-level data on suicide between 2002 and 2006, which shows, for instance, that minorities don’t commit suicide at anything near the same rate as whites: