 Opposite nonlinear effects of unemployment and sentiment on male and female suicide rates: Evidence from AustraliaFerdi Botha and Viet Hoang Nguyen Social Science & Medicine, 2022, vol. 292, issue C Abstract: We investigate gender differences in the effects of unemployment and sentiment on suicide rates. Using monthly Australian data, we find a positive relationship between the unemployment rate and the suicide rate, and a negative relationship between consumer sentiment and the suicide rate. However, there is strong evidence of nonlinearity in the effects of both unemployment and sentiment on suicide rates, with substantial gender differences. For men, an increase in the unemployment rate increases the suicide rate, but an unemployment decrease has no effect; we find the opposite for women. For men, an increase in sentiment has stronger effects on the suicide rate than a decrease in sentiment. Again, we observe the opposite effect for women. Among sentiment components, forward-looking expectations are stronger predictors of suicide rates than present conditions. Sentiment has a much stronger effect on male suicide rates than on female suicide rates. Keywords: Suicide rate; Unemployment rate; Consumer sentiment; Australia; Asymmetry (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:292:y:2022:i:c:s0277953621008686 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114536 Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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