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Knocking on Heaven?s Door? Protestantism and Suicide

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  • Woessmann, Ludger
  • Becker, Sascha O.

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Woessmann, Ludger & Becker, Sascha O., 2011. "Knocking on Heaven?s Door? Protestantism and Suicide," CEPR Discussion Papers 8448, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8448
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    11. Daly, Mary C. & Oswald, Andrew J. & Wilson, Daniel & Wu, Stephen, 2011. "Dark contrasts: The paradox of high rates of suicide in happy places," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 435-442.
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    14. Rosenthal, Robert W., 1993. "Suicide attempts and signalling games," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 25-33, July.
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    Cited by:

    1. Sascha O. Becker & Francesco Cinnirella & Erik Hornung & Ludger Woessmann, 2014. "iPEHD--The ifo Prussian Economic History Database," Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(2), pages 57-66, June.
    2. Christian Breuer, 2015. "Unemployment and Suicide Mortality: Evidence from Regional Panel Data in Europe," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(8), pages 936-950, August.
    3. Janine Höhener & Christoph A. Schaltegger, 2012. "Religionsökonomie: eine Übersicht," CREMA Working Paper Series 2012-08, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    4. Joe Chen & Shih-Chang Huang, 2020. "Suicide, Aging, and Permanent Income: A Social Norms Approach," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 150(3), pages 867-885, August.
    5. Benno Torgler & Christoph A. Schaltegger, 2012. "Suicide and Religion: New Evidence on The Differences Between Protestantism and Catholicism," CREMA Working Paper Series 2012-12, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    6. Yun Jeong Choi & Hyungna Oh, 2016. "Does Media Coverage of a Celebrity Suicide Trigger Copycat Suicides?: Evidence from Korean Cases," Journal of Media Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 92-105, April.
    7. Ludger Wößmann, 2010. "The importance of religion for education: An economic-historical research agenda based on Prussian district data, Part 1," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 63(23), pages 25-32, December.
    8. Dasgupta, Aparajita & Majid, Farhan & Orman, Wafa Hakim, 2023. "The nutritional cost of beef bans in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    9. Benno Torgler & Christoph A. Schaltegger, 2012. "Suicide and Religion: New Evidence on The Differences Between Protestantism and Catholicism," CREMA Working Paper Series 2012-12, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Prussian economic history; Religion; Suicide;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

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