Wow, a new study by a group of Australian scientists has found that the national suicide rate increases when political conservatives are in power. They found that middle-aged and older people were most at risk, and that when Conservatives ruled both state and federal governments, men were 17% more likely to commit suicide and women were 40% more likely to kill themselves. Why is there such a powerful and significant effect?
"There is a strong relationship between socio-economic status and suicide," said lead researcher Professor Richard Taylor, of the University of Sydney, Australia. "We think that it may be because material conditions in lower socio-economic groups may be relatively better under labour because of government programs, and there may be a perception of greater hope by these groups under labour."
Interestingly, the authors point out that although suicide rates tend to increase when unemployment is high, they were also above average during the 1950s when Britain "never had it so good," but was ruled by the Conservative party.
Overall, they say, the figures suggest that 35,000 people would not have died had the Conservatives not been in power, equivalent to one suicide for every day of the 20th century or two for every day that the Conservatives ruled.
I wonder what the conservatives have to say about this? Or do they even care?
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Conservatives like killing people who aren't them, so no, they not only don't care, they LIKE it. "Oooh, somebody got driven to suicide? Excellent, more for me!"
Interesting. There's not much of a standard deviation, though. I'm not sure it isn't just random distribution about the mean. And the series is short enough that I wouldn't imagine any real conclusion could be drawn, but I'll give Roy props for trying.
The same research was written about in New Scientist, and Mary Shaw (one of the researchers) said that the link between suicide rates and ruling party ideology was "pure speculation". http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2817
Still, I'd be really interested in seeing the data for other countries to see if the trend holds. That would be interesting political fodder, indeed. I can't find exactly the same data at CDC, but it makes me want to go digging around for it.
Oh, and while I disagree with Roy about conservatives being gleeful about the suicides of others, I do agree that they wouldn't care about this data.
I know how much fun you get out of kicking the Right, but don't forget the huge difference between what 'conservative' means in Europe compared to North America (not sure about Oz), because the political centre of gravity is so much further to the left. I doubt the 1950s UK Conservative party was to the right of Clinton - in fact the only post-war PM who would have been was Thatcher, and when she was in power half the Labour Party had a thing for Fidel Castro. Not sure I really buy the suggested explanation either, but maybe the Right's emphasis on the individual, rather than society, makes vulnerable people feel more isolated.
Or something.
Alternative explanation: Assume, and I'm sure there's data for this, middle-aged and older people kill themselves with a higher rate than other groups. Also assume, and I think you'll give me this one, middle-aged and older people vote for more conservative candidates. If the percentage of middle-age and older people in the population increases, there'd be more suicides and more conservative governments elected.
Its the variation in demographics that drives both effects.
My hunch is few people on either the right or the left change their ideologies merely because their ideologies are bad for others.
And the study isn't new... It was published in 2002.
BTW, the conclusions of the study aren't confirmed by a check of cross-country data. Finland and Sweden both have more redistributive policies than the U.S. and both have higher suicide rates. There's over twice as many suicides in Finland as the U.S. Countries you can think of being more liberal than the U.S. (France, Japan, New Zealand, not to mention Australia) tend to have higher suicide rates. Actually, I was surprised to see the U.S. has such a low rate...
Will -
1. The Australian study was age adjusted, so it isn't demographics.
2. Stay here in Finland between November and March, and you'll see why the suicide rate is higher. The Aussie study is god in that it uses the same base population. Mind you, as one of the commentators on the paper pointed out, it would be good to see similar data from the other Australian states.
Oh, and the stuff about the UK rates is awful. There isn't any data analysis, just arm-waving. Just plotting the data shows that there are considerable temporal variations, but it's not obvious what the overall effect would be. More Research is Needed (and can I have the money to do it?).
Bob
Thanks Bob. I couldn't access the paper, even through my University's proxy... If they control for age, my particular alternative doesn't work.
I think my general criticism stands. Without a clear causal mechanism (that would explain cross-country differences), its hard for the authors to exclude a third factor causing both effects (more conservative voting and more suicides) independently.
Even if conservative governments and suicide are related causally, the mechanism doesn't have to be policy. Perhaps people vote for 'tough' conservatives when they think the world is going to hell in a hand basket, for example.
Also, policy would seem to be the least likely mechanism because it would take a while for policy to have an impact after an election. Governments don't change policy the second they gain office and the changes they do make will take a while to effect the average person.
Aside: Regarding Finland, I see that Alaska has similar rates. Why don't we see similar rates in Iceland?
Why don't we see similar rates in Iceland?
I blame Bjork.
I wonder about relative cloud cover in Finland, Alaska, and Iceland. I guess I'd be surprised to see historical cloud cover data, but it would be interesting to see if it correlated.
Maybe people vote for conservatives when the weather is bad, and so suicides and Republicans (or your nation's equivalent) are both effects of bad weather...
i would also think that cloud cover would play a significant role in the suicide rate, especially since the Brits show an elevated suicide rate in the 1950s -- was it cloudier (or smoggier) during those years? i'd love to see more rigorous analysis done on these authors' observations.
incidentally, as i recall from my psychology classes, elderly people and teen agers have the highest suicide rates, while middle-aged and older people have fairly low suicide rates, although unemployment certainly plays a significant role in elevating suicide in the middle-aged and older age groups.
I think in psychology class you heard suicide is one of the top causes of death in the young, but the rates appear to be lower for teenagers than most adult cohorts.
BTW, here's some raw cloud cover data... If someone was really aggressive they could collate this data with country data and test your hypothesis. How to get a measure of 'conservativeness' across countries?
I love google and the internets! :-)