Reading the Rate: Individualism, Diagnostic Capacity, and Identified Autism as a Social Fact

Authors

Abstract

AbstractIdentified autism prevalence behaves like a Durkheimian social fact: it moves with the society doing the identifying. Across countries, individualism and diagnostic capacity could not be separated (Snow, 2026b). I test that separation four ways. Across 51 countries without mandatory screening, a majority language that requires the pronoun "I" predicted identified prevalence (r =.62), but the association fell to partial r =.19 to.29 once wealth and diagnostic infrastructure were controlled. Across 47 Japanese prefectures from 2008 to 2024, as school-based specialist support spread, urbanization's association with the autism share faded and household-structure individualism predicted where the share grew (p =.005), robust to pediatrician density and to published individualism scores. In eight Chinese cities screened under one protocol, more collectivist cities had lower observed prevalence (rho = −.76), and rice farming pointed the same way more weakly (rho = −.57). Across US states from 2005 to 2024, the autism share of special education rose from 3.0% to 13.0%; individualism did not predict growth once urbanization was controlled, and insurance mandates predicted nothing. Change over time can separate individualism from the system that counts autism, but only where that system has spread. Following Perry's account of the survival brain, I read a society's conditions as shaping how nervous systems organize, and its institutions as deciding what to call the result. In US school data, more urban states identify autism at higher and faster-growing rates, which suggests rural areas have less capacity to recognize and support autistic people.

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