Climate change and agricultural suicides in India

Carleton (1) claims that “temperature during India’s main agricultural growing season has a strong positive effect on annual suicide rates.” Using state-scale panel data for 1967–2013, the author suggests that an increase in 1 °C temperature in a single day can cause ∼70 suicides. The evidence, she argues, is consistent with “an agriculture channel in which heat damages crops,” resulting in economic hardship and suicide.There are flaws in the data and assumptions used by Carleton (1).The data on deaths from suicide are from the National Crime Records Bureau. The problem of underreporting in data from police records is recognized, though not that … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: tjayaraman{at}tiss.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1