COMMENTARY

Suicide

Research on unemployment and suicide

A J Kposowa

University of California at Riverside, USA

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr A J Kposowa, Department of Sociology, University of California, 1214 Watkins Hall, 900 University Avenue, Riverside, CA 92521, USA;
ajkposowa@att.net

---

Problems and consequences

---

Keywords: suicide; unemployment; socioeconomic status

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Many capitalist economies are characterised by business cycles with concomitant increases in joblessness during recessions and depressions, and reductions in unemployment in periods of economic expansion. In view of the potentially debilitating consequences of joblessness on health and related outcomes, research on unemployment and suicide continues to be relevant in both epidemiology and sociology. One controversy that continues is the issue of selection bias. The essential question that remains unresolved is whether the observed association between unemployment and suicide reported in some studies reflects direct causation or whether there is some variable that is causally prior to both unemployment and suicide.

The report by Blakely et al¹ presents an analysis of the New Zealand Census Mortality Study (NZCMS) that attempts to shed some light on the above question. Using logistic regression models on census mortality linked data on 1.65 million men and women aged 18 to 64 years, they . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Eliason, M., Storrie, D. (2009). Does Job Loss Shorten Life?. J. Human Resources 44: 277-302 [Abstract]  
• Agerbo, E. (2005). Effect of psychiatric illness and labour market status on suicide: a healthy worker effect?. J. Epidemiol. Community Health 59: 598-602 [Abstract] [Full Text]