The recent paper by Nevison and Zahorodny (2019) on trends in autism prevalence in the United States based on IDEA special education data concludes that “One of the most prominent features of the IDEA 3–5year-old dataset is the plateau in white ASD prevalence over birth years in the mid 2000s followed by a renewed increase in prevalence after birth year 2007.” The authors go on to state “This plateau might suggest a stabilization of the environmental drivers of ASD in the mid-2000s followed by a new or increasing environmental insult after 2007.” One important environmental “insult” not considered in the paper is the great economic recession that occurred in the U.S. during the period December 2007–June 2009. In Fig. 1, we plotted data provided as supplementary material to Nevison and Zahorodny’s paper, showing the trend over time between 2000 and 2017 in the percentage of white children, ages 3–5 years, in the U.S. receiving special education services under the autism classification. The shaded area represents the economic recession, which occurred when children born between 2003 and 2006 spanned the age range of 3–5 years and before those born in 2007 reached age three.
Fig. 1
Percentage of 3–5 year-old White children in the U.S. with an autism special education classification, by year, with the 2007–2009 economic recession period shaded
