Knocking on Heaven?s Door? Protestantism and Suicide

Ludger Woessmann and Sascha Becker

No 8448, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We model the effect of Protestant vs. Catholic denomination in an economic theory of suicide, accounting for differences in religious-community integration, views about man?s impact on God?s grace, and the possibility of confessing sins. We test the theory using a unique micro-regional dataset of 452 counties in 19th-century Prussia, when religiousness was still pervasive. Our instrumental-variable model exploits the concentric dispersion of Protestantism around Wittenberg to circumvent selectivity bias. Protestantism had a substantial positive effect on suicide in 1816-21 and 1869-71. We address issues of bias from mental illness, misreporting, weather conditions, within-county heterogeneity, religious concentration, and gender composition.

Keywords: Prussian economic history; Religion; Suicide (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N33 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-06
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Knocking on Heaven's Door? Protestantism and Suicide (2011)
Working Paper: Knocking on Heaven's Door? Protestantism and Suicide (2011)
Working Paper: Knocking on Heaven’s Door? Protestantism and Suicide (2011)
Working Paper: Knocking on Heaven’s Door? Protestantism and Suicide
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