Gender difference in suicide, household production and unemployment

Chung, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4167-4012 (2009) Gender difference in suicide, household production and unemployment. Applied Economics, 41 (19). pp. 2495-2504. ISSN 1466-4283 doi: 10.1080/00036840802599446

Abstract/Summary

This paper aims to explain why men’s suicide rate is generally higher than women’s and why the former tends to fluctuate with unemployment. Adopting Hamermesh and Soss’s suicide model (1974), with a two-period household production model, I argue that (1) the gender gap in suicide rate increases with the unemployment rate, because unemployed men suffer a larger ‘human capital loss,’ due to the division of labor within their household and (2) men’s suicide rate is generally higher than women’s because of the shorter expected life of the former. Both international and US evidences support this hypothesis.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/106174
Identification Number/DOI	10.1080/00036840802599446
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	No Reading authors. Back catalogue items Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Politics, Economics and International Relations > Economics
Publisher	Routledge
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