Knocking on Heaven's Door? Protestantism and Suicide

Sascha Becker and Ludger Woessmann

No 5773, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

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; suicide; religion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N33 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2011-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - published as 'Social Cohesion, Religious Beliefs, and the Effect of Protestantism on Suicide 'in: Review of Economics and Statistics, 2018, 100(3), 377-391

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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 (2011)
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