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The Effect of Unemployment on Suicide

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Abstract This paper seeks to understand the relationship between a country's rate of unemployment and the amounts of suicides that take place within that country. We hope that this understanding will allow for insight into the state of mind of the general body of the unemployed and that this insight will help with understanding the economies effects on the overall depression within a country. In order to accomplish this we will take a regression between the unemployment and suicide rates with several countries to discover their statistical relationship is and from there draw conclusions based on our results. Unemployed and Jumping the Boat In our paper we wish to analyze whether the unemployment rates are correlated with suicide rates. More specifically, whether we can measure identifiable fluctuations in the unemployment rates of a certain country to show that they are similarly displayed in the variations of suicide rate data in said country. For example, developing countries such as Argentina, Chile, Peru and Brazil all display a high ratio of unemployment in their populations which suggests a higher prevalence of suicide. Many individuals included in the unemployment data are those who live at the lowest standard of living. It is important to understand the causation between cognitive health and the economy because it is something that we all have in common. By learning more about the relationship between unemployment and suicide we can take more effective action in the goal to reduce poverty, which is one of the primary goals of the economists of every country. The world economy is driven upon the currency system. People value currency because of the things it can purchase for them such as food, furniture, guns and horses. When someone loses their job or is unsuccessful in finding a job, they cannot earn money for themselves and must resort to handouts from the government, family and friends. For some individuals, unemployment is bearable, such as single men and women with no dependents who can easily rely upon their parents for financial support. However for many, being unemployed is very stressful because of those who rely upon them for support such as children and elderly parents. These individuals who carry more financial responsibility can suffer from mental distress such as anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts due to their inability to find a job. Therefore, when the unemployment rate rises, more individuals with a heavier financial burden are put under great stress which leads to more individuals having suicidal thoughts and depression which leads to more individuals actually committing suicide. There have been many articles in academia regarding are subject matter. One of which was Thomas Blakely who found that unemployment was strongly associated with suicide death among 18–24 year old men (Blakely 2003). Previous work on the subject has also been done by Korean economist Yong-Hwan Noh of Seoul Women's University. After controlling for size of expenditures for the unemployed and the level of alcohol consumption, Noh discovered that "unemployment does significantly affect suicide rates, but in a way that varies for income: In a positive manner for high-income countries, but in a negative manner for low-income countries” (Noh 2009). This suggests that suicide rates would be lower in poorer countries because of relative poverty. In poorer countries it is more socially acceptable to lose your job because fewer individuals have jobs. Perhaps In wealthier countries it is more traumatizing to lose your job because you become more relatively poor to your neighbors. Another economist to study this subject was Aj Kposowa who found that “After 3 years of follow-up, unemployed men were a little over twice as likely to commit suicide as their employed counterparts. Among men, the lower the socio-economic status, the higher the suicide risk. Among women, in each year of follow-up, the unemployed had a much higher suicide risk than the employed” (Kposowa 2008). These findings help us in our regression setup and expected results because they allow us to identify the methods that other economists used to test our hypothesis so that we can adjust our meth

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