Suicide Mortality in Russia: Do Urban Men React to Economic Fluctuations More than Women?

Abstract

Suicides have a considerable effect on the labour supply due to its high place in the list of mortality causes of working age population. However, many countries do not conduct a suicide preventive policy. The Russian Federation is one of them, but its suicide mortality rates are falling since the beginning of 2000's. In this paper the issue of suicide mortality of working age population is considered in terms of the influence of economic fluctuations on suicidal behavior specific to gender. The hypothesis about the gender difference was confirmed: the reaction of men’s suicidal mortality rates to increase of economic factors (real GRP growth rate and income per capita) is negative and significant, while women’s is insignificant. Besides that, crude marriage and divorce ratio are also significant for men: marriages with negative effect on suicide rates and divorces with positive. Crude birth rates are positive and significant and total dependency ratio is negative and significant for both sexes. Dependency ratio with distinction for child and aged shows ambiguous result. Number of physicians per capita and museum attendance per head are insignificant.

Keywords: suicide mortality, economic fluctuation, urban population

JEL Classification: C51, I15, J11, J20