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Social cohesion, religious beliefs, and the effect of Protestantism on suicide
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Becker, Sascha O. and Woessmann, Ludger (2018) Social cohesion, religious beliefs, and the effect of Protestantism on suicide. Review of Economics and Statistics, 100 (3). pp. 377-391. doi:10.1162/REST_a_00708 ISSN 0034-6535.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1162/REST_a_00708
Abstract
In an economic theory of suicide, we model social cohesion of the religious community and religious beliefs about afterlife as two mechanisms by which Protestantism increases suicide propensity. We build a unique micro-regional dataset of 452 Prussian counties in 1816-21 and 1869-71, when religiousness was still pervasive. Exploiting the concentric dispersion of Protestantism around Wittenberg, our instrumental-variable model finds that Protestantism had a substantial positive effect on suicide. Results are corroborated in first-difference models. Tests relating to the two mechanisms based on historical church-attendance data and modern suicide data suggest that the sociological channel plays the more important role.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Alternative Title: | |||||||||
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Suicide -- Economic aspects., Suicide -- Religious aspects., Suicide -- Prevention., Suicide -- Social aspects., Suicide -- Statistics. | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Review of Economics and Statistics | ||||||||
| Publisher: | MIT Press | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0034-6535 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | July 2018 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 100 | ||||||||
| Number: | 3 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 377-391 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1162/REST_a_00708 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 8 February 2018 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 12 December 2018 | ||||||||
| Related URLs: |
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