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Inequality and Suicide Mortality: A Cross-Country Study
Antonio Rodríguez
October 2006
This paper tests whether economic inequality
is related to suicide mortality. Using an unbalanced panel of 40
countries for the period 1947-2001 allows us to control for the
effect of unobserved factors that may have an impact on suicide
rates. Our results indicate that there is a statistically
insignificant positive effect of inequality on the incidence of
suicide. The latter result seems to be robust to a number of
specification issues explored in a sensitivity analysis. Our
results also suggest that female labour participation has a
significant positive effect on the total (males and female)
suicide rates, supporting the sociological argument that the
role conflict dominates more than the role expansion. Contrary
to the total and male suicide rates findings, the fertility rate
matters in explaining female suicide rates. Finally, in contrast
to previous studies, suicide rates were not sensitive to income
levels, divorce rates and alcohol consumption.
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