Suicide, sentiment and crisis

ABSTRACT

A lack of clarity surrounds the precise nature of the transmission mechanism by which an economic crisis actually affects suicide. This study posits the hypothesis that this influence broadly translates as emotional reaction, ‘gut feelings’ and as such explicitly considers the use of subjective factors of economic performance to better explain variations in suicide rates. Alongside traditional economic indicators we use a ‘consumer sentiment’ measure, a sense of how economic factors are perceived to be impacting on individuals, to explain suicide rates. Furthermore, we explicitly consider the impact of the global financial crisis and test the impact of state public and health expenditures. Results show that consumer sentiment is found to offer a significantly greater explanatory role in exploring variations in the suicide rate compared to traditional economic indicators. Moreover, the effect of consumer sentiment is greater for females than for males, with some nuances in explaining this result. State public and health expenditures do not seem to have any significant influence on suicide rates.

KEYWORDS:

• Suicide
• USA
• Consumer sentiment
• Financial crisis

Notes

¹ For example, in the context of homicide, see Rosenfeld (2009) and Rosenfeld and Fornango (2007).

² Index calculations are described by the University of Michigan http://https://data.sca.isr.umich.edu/survey-info.php

³ We exploit further geographic measures in our study. Cheaper medication available in Mexico and better healthcare infrastructure in Canada should reduce the potential for suicidal behaviour. Building upon Model 1, Model 6 (not reported) further seeks to identify the border effect on the suicide rate. To this end, using data on the proximity of the state to the Northern and Southern US borders from the World Atlas (2015), we construct two dummy variables, NORTH and SOUTH, which take value 1 if the state shares border with Canada and Mexico, respectively, and take value 0 otherwise. We find that the border effect is negative and significant for working-age males living in the Southern border states. Thus, cheaper medication and services in Mexico may act as a suicide gatekeeper. Results are not reported but are available from the authors upon request.