Knocking on Heaven’s Door? Protestantism and Suicide

Sascha Becker and Ludger Woessmann

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

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. Key words: Religion ; suicide ; Prussian economic history JEL classification: Z12 ; N33

Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-ltv
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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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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:966

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