HOME

Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming-025

College of Business Administration
Reno, NV 89557-0208

Phone: (775) 784-1442
Fax: (775)784-1057

University of Nevada, Reno
Maintained by: Judy Cornelius
corneliu@unr.nevada.edu
Last Modified: 12/04/2002

Mark Nichols and B. Grant Stitt, University of Nevada, Reno;
David Giacopassi, University of Memphis

(Funded by the National Institute of Justice, Grant No. 98-IJ-CX-0037)

To analyze the impact that casino gambling has on the social fabric of a community, suicide and divorce rates in eight casino communities (Sioux City, IA; St. Joseph, St. Louis City; and St. Louis County, MO; Alton, Peoria, and East Peoria, IL; and Biloxi, MS) were compared to the rates in non-casino control communities. Five matching control communities were selected for each casino community to ensure generality of results. The control communities were selected based on their similarity to the casino communities on 15 demographic, social, and economic variables.

Calculating the difference in divorce rates before and after casinos entered communities and comparing the changes to their respective control communities indicate that the rates significantly decreased in four of the eight casino communities; in only one of the comparisons did the divorce rate in the casino community show a significant increase when compared to the control communities. These results suggest that statements proclaiming that casinos increase divorce in a community are not supported by the data.

When suicide rates are compared for casino and control communities, results indicate that suicide rates increased more or decreased less in six of the eight casino communities. In the other two comparisons, the suicide rate decreased more in the casino communities than in the control communities. The results, however, reached statistical significance in only three of the eight comparisons, increasing significantly in two cases and decreasing significantly in one case. To more fully examine the relationship of casinos to suicide, a regression equation was run controlling for economic, demographic, and social integration factors. The findings indicate that the presence of a casino is associated with a statistically significant increase in per capita suicide, but it should be noted that the overall fit of the equation is somewhat low (R² = .15).

Based on the findings of the present research, it is difficult to generalize about the effect of casino gambling on suicide and divorce. Casino communities tended to experience a greater decrease in divorce than in the control communities, whereas suicide showed the opposite effect. However, in examining both divorce and suicide, a few communities went against the general trend. What is apparent is that attempting to understand how casino gambling affects divorce and suicide in a community is not a simple matter and the effect of casinos on these phenomena does not lend itself to sweeping generalizations.