Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: Can socioeconomic factors seemingly explain variation in suicide rates at large-unit aggregate levels only due to an ecological fallacy? This is what Kunce and Anderson (2002) suggest based on fixed-effects estimation of US state suicide rates, in which they find little evidence that socioeconomic factors matter. This paper demonstrates that this result does not hold true for other large-unit aggregate levels in an analysis of suicide at the cross-national level. It is found that many socioeconomic factors have a statistically significant impact. It is concluded that sociological and economic theories explaining variation in suicide rates at the large-unit aggregate level with the help of aggregate socioeconomic factors cannot simply be dismissed because of an alleged ecological fallacy.
Source: Urban Studies
Author: Eric Neumayer
Institution: London School of Economics and Political Science
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2099090225