Unemployment and suicide in Italy: evidence of a long-run association mitigated by public unemployment spending

Abstract

From the mid-1990s on, the suicide rate in Italy declined steadily, then apparently rising again after the onset of the Great Recession, along with a sharp increase in unemployment. The aim of this study is to test the association between the suicide rate and unemployment (i.e., the unemployment rate for males and females in the period 1977-2015 and the long-term unemployment rate in the period 1983-2012) in Italy, by means of co-integration techniques. The analysis was adjusted for public unemployment spending (referring to the period 1980-2012). The study identified a long-run relationship between the suicide rate and long-term unemployment. On the other hand, an association between the suicide and unemployment rate stemmed out, though statistically weaker. A 1% increase in long-term unemployment increases the suicide rate by 0.83%, with a long-term effect lasting up to eighteen years. Public unemployment spending (as percentage of the Italian Gross Domestic Product) may mitigate this association: when its annual growth rate is higher than 0.18%, no impact of unemployment on suicide in detectable. A decrease in the suicide rate is expected for higher amounts of social spending, which may be able to compensate for the reduced level of social integration resulting from unemployment, helping the individual to continue to integrate into society. A corollary of this is that austerity in times of economic recession may exacerbate the impact of the economic downturn on mental health. However, a specific ''flexicurity'' system (intended as a combination of high employment protection, job satisfaction and labour-market policies) may have a positive impact on health. 2001 [25], while Stuckler et al. collected data referring to mortality in 1970-2003 (including 2006) [12]. Our intention was to fill this gap, by extending the analysis, thus including the Great Recession and the subsequent years of severe economic crisis, as well as data concerning social protection measures. Methods Data collection From the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Statistics (https://data.oecd.org/) we extracted the following data for Italy: male and female suicide rates (for the period 1977-2015), male and female unemployment rates (1977-2015), long-term unemployment rate (1983-2012), public unemployment spending expressed as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (1980-2012). According to the OECD, "Long-term unemployment refers to people who have been unemployed for 12 months or more. The long-term unemployment rate shows the proportion of these long-term unemployed among all unemployed." [34] On the other hand, "Public unemployment spending is defined as expenditure on cash benefits for people to compensate for unemployment. This includes redundancy payments from public funds, as well as the payment of pensions to beneficiaries before they reach the standard pensionable age, if these payments are made because the beneficiaries are out of work or for other labour market policy reasons. This indicator is measure...

Analysing regional unemployment rates, GDP per capita and financial support for regional suicide prevention programme on suicide mortality in Japan using governmental statistical data

“…North America and Asia. [5][6][7][8][9][10] Indeed, in Japan, following the collapse of the asset bubble in 1991 and the Asian economic crisis in 1997, both the unemployment rate and suicide mortality drastically increased in Japan (online supplementary appendix 1). 11 12 This Japanese public health crisis started to improve in 2009.…”

“…In this study, we hypothesised that suicide mortality has gender-specific and age-specific sensitivities to unemployment rate, GDP per capita and EFECBSC, based on previous findings about the impacts of macroeconomic factors and governmental financial support on suicide mortality. [5][6][7][8][9][10] Therefore, to develop a more cost-effective, evidence-based regional suicide mortality prevention programme, in this study, we analyse the impacts of prefecture-disaggregated unemployment rate, GDP per capita and the regional (prefectural/municipal) implementation amount of EFECBSC to 10 sub-divisions on gender and age disaggregated suicide mortalities between 2009 and 2018 when national suicide mortality has been decreasing.…”

Revisiting the Relationship Between Suicide and Unemployment in Mexico: Evidence From Linear and Non-linear Co-integration

“…Chang and Chen (21) and Lin and Chen (22) suggested that suicide rates are pro-cyclical corresponding to the changes in the unemployment rate in the US. Mattei and Pistoresi (10) found a continuing effect deep-rooted up to 18 years in Italy with a 1% increase in long-term unemployment add up to the suicide rate by 0.83%.…”

“…Breuer (12) and Reeves et al (13) used European Union data, Noh (14) with the OECD-countries data. To better understand this research, it is essential to highlight that some studies only examined austerity, otherwise known as the effect of economic generosity, policies on suicide (10,15,16), whereas other studies reviewed the linkage between business cycles and suicide rates (1,3,12,(17)(18)(19)(20). Another aspect that can also have an influence on suicide is economic fluctuations.…”

Macroeconomic Shocks, Job Security, and Health

“…Research shows that economic recessions are harmful for mental health. Deleterious effects have been detected for self-reported symptoms of poor mental health (McInerney et al, 2013), mental health-related hospitalisations (Engelberg and Parsons, 2013), prescriptions for anti -anxiety and anti-depressant medications (Bradford and Lastrapes, 2014), searches on the Internet for 'depression' and 'anxiety' (Tefft, 2011), and suicide rates (Ruhm, 2000;Phillips and Nugent, 2014 ;Breuer, 2015;Mattei and Pistoresi, 2019). It has also been found that recessions reduce life satisfaction (Di Tella et al, 2003;Luechinger et al, 2010) .…”