Does unemployment increase suicide rates? The OECD panel evidence

Noh, Yong-Hwan

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2009, vol. 30, issue 4, pages 575-582

Abstract: Previous studies of whether unemployment increases suicide rates give mixed results. None of them controlled for an interaction between unemployment and income. This paper tests the hypothesis whether the relationship between unemployment rates and suicide rates vary according to the level of real per capita GDP. We use the cross-country panel fixed effects approach to exclude cross-sectional variations but exploit time-series ones. We support that higher income is associated with higher suicide rates. In particular, the evidence shows that the implied effect of unemployment on suicide rates is positive for countries with higher income. Actually, for countries with lower-income levels, there is a negative impact of unemployment on suicides.

Keywords: Suicide; Unemployment; Interaction; effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V8H ... 5ab0547ef89cb41a8202
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:30:y:2009:i:4:p:575-582

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Psychology is edited by G. Antonides and D. Read

More articles in Journal of Economic Psychology from Elsevier
Series data maintained by Heidi Boesdal ().