We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
Economic hardship and suicide mortality in Finland, 1875-2010.
- Authors
Korhonen, Marko; Puhakka, Mikko; Viren, Matti
- Abstract
We investigate the determinants of suicide in Finland using annual data for consumption and suicides from 1860 to 2010. Instead of using some ad hoc measures of cyclical movements of the economy, we build our analysis on a more solid economic theory. A key feature is the habit persistence in preferences, which provides a way to measure individual well-being and predict suicide. We estimate time series of habit levels and develop an indicator (the hardship index) to describe the economic hardship of consumers. The higher the level of the index, the worse off consumers are. As a rational response to such a bad situation, some consumers might commit suicide. We employ the autoregressive distributed lags cointegration method and find that our index works well in explaining the long-term behavior of people committing suicide in Finland.
- Subjects
FINLAND; SUICIDE; PUBLIC health; CONSUMPTION (Economics); COINTEGRATION; ECONOMETRICS; CONSUMERS
- Publication
European Journal of Health Economics, 2016, Vol 17, Issue 2, p129
- ISSN
1618-7598
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1007/s10198-014-0658-5