GOOD produced this sharp info-graphic on murder rates worldwide. One interesting trend it doesn’t show: countries with lower murder rates tend to have higher rates of suicide. Take Japan, which has one of the lowest murder rates in the world — just 0.5 per 100,000 people. It also has a very high rate of suicide, 23.7 per 100,000. Jamaica, on the other hand, has an unusually high murder rate — 49 per 100,000 — and the unusually low suicide rate of 0.35 per 100,000. There are outliers, of course. The highest suicide rates in the world are to be found in successor states to the Soviet Union and the former Warsaw pact, including the Ukraine (52.1), Belarus (63.6), and the Russian Federation itself (70.6). Murder rates in these countries are also elevated (7.04, 7.53, and 16.5 respectively). By way of comparison, the murder rate in the U.S. is 5.8 per 100,000. The suicide rate is 10.85, meaning you’re twice as likely to die by your own hand here than at the hands of another. [%comments]
Fewer Murders, More Suicide?
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I should add (in the interest of correctness and giving proper recognition where it is due)– thanks to a friend from the field of psychology. (Goldstein, 2003)
sorry- but I meant Einstein’s friend. I too had one from the field of psychology and I wish he were here to appreciate this real moment. But I am certain that he saw, predicting, it coming
Science Minded
My reference point is more encompassing I feel. Instead of looking at just the individual or just the society on the general level I am thinking of it in terms of how the emotions, the positives and the negatives flow through a society to the individual and vice versa. I feel that in finding these things that go beyond the individual or beyond the group as a whole. As you note above the affect that family has on the suicide rate, because there is no flow through mechanism for anything to connect them to society at large. It is the intermediate society, whether family or community, that gives a better insight into why people do things. To simply say because they are poor negates the findings, poverty is one part of it but in order to break it down further, either to find what keeps the poverty from creating the violence or what enforces the negativity of poverty.
Granted this is more difficult as the individual can overide any influences to make a decision positive or negative but I think that it is in this area where individuals and society connect or don’t connect that tell you more when you are trying to look at subjects like this.
To bring it back to an economic idea, these studies are just recounting a series of micro events, we are trying to understand them in a macro context but without understanding the micro any macro we come up with will be wrong because we have no way of knowing why it is that way or if it will always hold true.
So is there a place where the suicide/murder rate has taken a wild swing in the other direction within a generation or two?
For example, if Elbonia had a very high murder rate in the 1970′s but now has a very low rate, did its suicide rate invert also?
Science Minded -
Good call on Durkheim. That was the first thing on my mind when I saw the title of this post.
The picture is not complete without some more deep insight into the cultural dynamics of each country.
Take for example the suicide rate of former Soviet Republic where the collapse of existing order led millions of men into heavy drinking and that’s the number one killer over there , and IT IS suicide (albeit slow and painful).
Or North America where millions of its citizens are on anti-depressants and otherwise would just killed themselves and the rate of suicide would go through the roof.
Very interesting observation, I wonder if anyone has been studying this a little more in depth.
Personally I’d always choose a country with high suicide and low murder rate. At least then it is more probably your own decision if you are going to die prematurely.
Elderly people are much more likely to commit suicide than young people. There’ re lots of elderly people in Japan. I strongly suspect that the average age of those who commit suicide in Japan is higher than those who commit suicide in the US.