Introduction
People are likely to commit suicide due to poverty, which means that income plays a role in suicide decision. Early research has shown that almost one million people globally commit suicide annually (Sawada, Ueda & Matsubayashi, 2018). According to the world organization (WHO), this particular number has translated to a global mortality rate as sixteen people per every one hundred thousand people, which is equivalent to one suicide every forty seconds. From former Soviet republics, this particular number indicates a reality of a grimmer even. From the statistics, in 2010, WHO established that globally mortality rate that was due to suicide was 27.6 per one hundred thousand in Kazakhstan to thirty-six point eight per one hundred thousand people in Belarus (Bowmaker, 2005). From these statistics, we can conclude that there is an indication of the prevalence of abject despair that exists among individuals. From this particular data, it is evident that income in one way is likely to impact on the suicide rate. Therefore, this paper tries to establish how income is expected to affect the suicide rate in the world.
Literature Review
Previous research has established that there is a relationship between the income rate and the rate of suicide globally. According to a sociological perspective by Emile Durkheim's, there are two suicidal behavior stems that exist from one particular source out of the two (Sawada, Ueda & Matsubayashi, 2018). The first source is based on the extent of social integration from certain groups and institutions. If a person is likely to poses weak ties, it implies that his or her propensity is likely to draw him or her into committing suicide. Moreover, the second source entails a disparity between needs and means. According to Durkheim, he believes that these sources are more of a philosophical sense, and hence some discrepancies exist between needs and means, thus contributing to suicide. Other theories have established that there is an economic component that determines suicide decisions for an individual. According to Adam Smith's theory off Moral Sentiment, he believes that suicide arises from psychological derangement but not necessarily from logical decision-making. In 1974, Hamermesh and Soss proposed an economic theory of suicide that indicated that for a person to make a suicide decision, there must be a maximization utility (Gunn & Lester, 2014). From this theoretical framework, a rational agent decides to commit suicide due to a fall in lifetime utility below a critical threshold.
More philosophers and psychologists have emerged from the field of economics with some theories of suicide. According to Lester and Yang, they believe that suicide acts as “good” that is traded in a market. Additionally, the “supply” aspect of this particular model can be explained as a negative relationship that exists between the cost based on the suicide decision, for instance, time, money, the extent of the pain, and the probability of suicide attempt. From a “demand” perspective, there is a positive relationship between perceived gain that results from suicide and the propensity that draws a person into committing suicide. Huang (1997) suggested that for a person to arrive in a suicide decision, there must be an analogous to leisure decision (Bowmaker, 2005). Therefore, for a person who is contemplating suicide, he or she must decide on the effort that needs to be applied to living. Brainerd (2001), on the other hand, establishes that male suicide rates are likely to have a strong response to the microeconomic indicator, for example, GPD and unemployment.
Furthermore, he concluded that female suicide rates are a bit insensitive to such variables. In her argument, Brainerd says that the differences in sensitivity are likely to revels that non-market work is more variable compared to men in society. This paper tries to identify ways in which income is expected to have effects on the suicide rate in our community and globally at large.
Empirical Methodology
This research paper models suicide as a rationally made choice that consists of both social-demographic and economic considerations. This research uses the econometric model approach to help in determining how income is likely to affect the suicide rate in the world. Econometrics entails economic relationships in measurement. It can be defined as an integration of economics and mathematics to provide numerical figures in the aspect of the economic relationship (Gabby, Thagard & Woods, 2012). In this regard, the relationship of economics is mostly used mathematically in a combination of empirical economics. Econometrics methods are essential in the determination of the value of parameters, which can be viewed as a coefficient of mathematical form in the relationship that exists in economics. This research adopts a statistical method to make an explanation of the econometric process. There is a depiction of random behavior that lies between econometrics and economic relationship, which in most cases, is not considered in mathematical formulations. However, the econometric method is commonly used in other fields such as engineering field. Therefore, the econometric approach will help to determine the relationship between income and effect of suicide and other relationship between different variables.
A model is defined as a simple representation of various processes in the real-world. In this note, a model must be represented in the aspect where it poses salient characteristics of the phenomena under research. The aim of modeling in this particular research is to have a simplified model to define a complex phenomenon. This kind of concern might lead to an oversimplified model, and the anticipated hypothesis might be unrealistic. The variable used in this study that is relevant to explain the phenomena is to be included in the model. The other variables should be taken to the disturbance where they are random variables. Hence, this is the fundamental difference that is there between econometric and economic modeling. The nature of the mathematics model is exact, while, on the other hand, the statistical model poses a stochastic term as well. The main objective of econometrics in this study is to formulate and specify econometric models. In this note, there is a formulation of economic models in empirical testable from where myriad models are derived from a specific economic model. The differences that exist due to choices of functional form.
Secondly, the other object of econometrics in this study is to test and estimate models used based on data collected and tested for suitability. Other estimation procedures will be adopted to establish the numerical values of parameters that are not known. Therefore, there is a need to select a suitable model. The obtained models are used to forecast and formulate policies that apply to any policy decision. This forecast enables the researcher to make a good judgment on the suitable model and undertake the suitable measures and adjust again on the variables. Descriptive statistics are presented in this research, where variables are used in the model. Table 1 shows variables that are obtained by gender in two columns, while at the bottom of the table, there is a population of variables. Four values are present in each variable that is the maximum, minimum, mean, and the standard error. The entire component is evaluated from collective observation, for example, in twenty countries that are used in six years. (N=126)
Table 1 A descriptive table for male and female.
Table 1 above, we can conclude that mean of suicide is higher compared to that of females in all age groups. It is seen that there is a high mean of males in this period where pensioners contain about thirty-two suicides per one hundred thousand people. The most significant number of females is among the working group, where there are twelve suicides. However, it is notable that there is a surprisingly high male youth suicide rate, which approached a mean of nineteen suicides. In comparison, there is an estimation variation between the min and max values in the county average. Statistics show that there is a variation of both genders in countries' suicide rates. For instance, there is a variation from 0 to 14 suicides for female youth suicide. The standard deviation is seen to be slightly higher for males than females, which means that the male suicide rate is volatile when compared to the female rate. Comparing the unemployment rate between males and females, the two are seen to be similar. Therefore, there is a higher variation between different countries for male unemployment than females. A high number of unemployment indicates that income is low for both genders, thus contributes to the suicide rate.
Empirical Results
From the data obtained, results are represented by gender, where we have two models that have been used to represent the female gender. From the results, table 2 shows regression output for the female gender where Gini and Income population is shown. However, youth is the only group that has shown significant results. We can conclude that there would be a decline in the number of suicides for seven hundred and two per every one hundred thousand inhabitants. There is an average income that is significant at a level of ten percent. In this regard, an increase in one percent for the average income may lead to 1.57 less suicide per every one hundred thousand persons. This particular result is by prospects where it is anticipated that a high average income is likely to reduce suicide cases. At five percent, the rate of unemployment is significant, where a 1% unit increase in the number of unemployment is expected to lead to an increase in the rate of suicide case for 1.71 per every one hundred thousand individuals.
The results also indicate that also is another factor that has led to an increase in the rate of suicide. The result shows that there is a significant five percent level of alcohol where there is an increase in the number of suicide for 10.15 cases per every one hundred thousand people. This analysis shows that both alcohol and unemployment are per what people expect. From the data analysis, we can conclude that there is a correlation between the income of an individual and the suicide rate. In this regard, people who have low income are likely to attempt suicide. We can also conclude that there is a variation on the income inequality on suicide cases that exists among various groups, which is supported by the aspect that there is no model that shows significant results. Therefore, income inequality is a factor that impacts on suicide cases for both genders. The results also indicate that reference matters a lot for the female gender and, hence, they compare themselves as more significant to other females than the whole population. In my opinion, there are some implications for future potential costs if only suicide cases can be prevented before they happen. Therefore, there is a need for society and the world at large to play a critical role in reducing suicide cases that results from income constrains. A country and the world should come up with remedies that will help to mitigate suicide cases by helping those who have low income.
Conclusion
From the discussion, this research has shown that people are likely to commit suicide due to poverty. Therefore, it is evident that income plays a role in suicide decision. From the previous research, there is a clear indication that almost one million people globally commit suicide every year. More research that has been done earlier has established that there is a relationship between the income rate and the rate of suicide in the world.
