ObjectiveThe purpose of the study was to examine the association of temporal factors, in particular days of the week and seasons of the year and death from suicide in the United States.MethodData were pooled from the Multiple Cause of Death Files. Hierarchical logistic regression models were fitted to all deaths occurring in 2000 through 2004 by suicide.ResultsThe incidence of suicide was significantly higher on Wednesdays, compared to Sunday. Specifically, individuals were 99% more likely to kill themselves on Wednesday than on Sunday. Suicides were more prevalent in the summer months, and they were less likely to occur in winter. The state suicide rate significantly elevated individual suicide risk. The results held even after controlling for the potentially confounding effects of socio-economic and demographic variables at both the individual and state levels.ConclusionIt was concluded that the observed association between seasonality and suicide cannot be discounted as a mere coincidence. Future research ought to focus on integrating individual level data and contextual variables when testing for seasonality effects.

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Reconceptualizing welfare-state regimes in terms of the interactions between markets, states, and gender and family relations, cross-national feminist scholarship reveals that the United States is relatively more "market-based" in its approach to both employment and care work than other wealthy democracies. Consequently female poverty, especially of lone mothers, is far higher in the United States compared to other wealthy democracies. Feminist scholarship also highlights the ways in which U.S. welfare programs are deeply gendered in terms of their underlying philosophies, recipient populations, and distribution of benefits. Feminist scholars have reconceptualized the origins and development of the U.S. welfare state in terms of a "two-track" system that has reinforced both gender and racial inequalities. Programs serving mostly men, such as veterans' benefits or unemployment insurance, provided relatively generous benefits and portrayed recipients as deserving. In contrast, programs serving mostly women, such as mothers' pensions, were relatively stingy, restrictive, and stigmatizing. At the beginning of the 20th century, reformers justified welfare for lone mothers in maternalist terms, emphasizing the value of full-time motherhood for child development. Support for maternalist welfare policies, although never strong, was further weakened as maternal employment grew and as more women of color and unwed mothers gained access to welfare. Since the late 1960s, efforts to reform the welfare system led to the expansion of federal welfare-to-work programs, which have largely tracked participants into low-wage jobs. Child-care subsidies also expanded in this period, but have remained relatively minimal and distributed in ways that reinforced class divisions among working families.

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