Suicide Rate and Welfare Expenditure among OECD Countries

There has been a continuous concern about the rapidly increasing rate of suicide in industrialized societies. While prior research has focused on the psychopathological aspects of suicide phenomenon, the societal impetus for suicide has received far less attention. As Durkheim argued in his classic 'Suicide' , however, suicide primarily results from a lack of integration of the individual into society. Based on Durkheim's social integration theory, this study investigates social factors associated with suicide. Particularly, this study concentrates on the impact of government welfare expenditure on suicide rate among the OECD countries.

This study collected data from 29 OECD countries between 1980 and 2005. Thus each country has a maximum 25 individual cases, representing 25 years of annual suicide rate (dependent variable). The change in the annual suicide rate can be represented though a two-level structure. At level 1, the annual suicide rate of a given country follows the unique time trajectory of the county. At level 2, the trajectory of each country may depend on country-level covariates, including annual social expenditure (independent variable), unemployment rate, inflation rate, GDP per capita, aging population rate. To analyze this multi-level data structure, we employed a robust statistical method, mixed-effect model.

The results revealed a significant negative relationship between suicide rate and government welfare expenditure, controlling for other county-level covariates. Arguable, the finding implies that welfare expenditure alleviates social exclusion and therefore reduces suicide. Based on the results, we discuss the function of government welfare expenditure as a societal mechanism of suicide reduction.