IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v46y2014i10p1081-1092.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do downturns cause desperation? The effect of economic conditions on suicide rates in Canada

Author

Listed:
  • Emmanuelle Pi鲡rd
  • Paul Grootendorst

Abstract

There is conflicting evidence concerning the impact of macroeconomic conditions on suicide rates. To help resolve this pertinent question, we present evidence using Canadian data. We estimate feasible generalized least squares models of annual gender-specific suicide rates in the working age population (aged 25--64) using data from each of the 10 Canadian provinces over the period 1982 to 2007. We allow for heteroscedasticity across provinces and first-order autocorrelation common to all provinces. We posit that suicide rates in this population are a function of macroeconomic conditions (current and lagged unemployment rates and real per capita GDP) and other determinants that might be correlated with macro conditions, such as physician supply. We find that different factors affect suicide rates across genders and that some of the results are sensitive to the specification of the model we use and the regressors included. Generally, economic conditions affect men more than women; suicide rates are counter-cyclical and a higher supply of psychiatrists in a province is correlated with lower suicide rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Emmanuelle Pi鲡rd & Paul Grootendorst, 2014. "Do downturns cause desperation? The effect of economic conditions on suicide rates in Canada," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(10), pages 1081-1092, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:46:y:2014:i:10:p:1081-1092
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2013.866204
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2013.866204
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2013.866204?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eric Vaz & Richard Ross Shaker & Michael D. Cusimano & Luis Loures & Jamal Jokar Arsanjani, 2020. "Does Land Use and Landscape Contribute to Self-Harm? A Sustainability Cities Framework," Data, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-18, January.
    2. Blázquez-Fernández, Carla & Lanza-León, Paloma & Cantarero-Prieto, David, 2020. "A systematic review on the suicide’s consequences of social isolation/and loneliness: a first approach to measure indirect effects of COVID-19," MPRA Paper 101188, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Sanna Huikari & Marko Korhonen, 2016. "The Impact of Unemployment on Well-Being: Evidence from the Regional Level Suicide Data in Finland," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 128(3), pages 1103-1119, September.
    4. Carla Blázquez-Fernández & David Cantarero-Prieto & Marta Pascual-Sáez, 2017. "What Does It Drive the Relationship Between Suicides and Economic Conditions? New Evidence from Spain," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 1087-1099, February.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:46:y:2014:i:10:p:1081-1092. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.