A paper claiming that
austerity in Greece had caused male suicide rates to rise significantly created
something of a stir this week.
There is no doubt that six years of deep
recession in Greece have taken their toll on the population. The paper shows a
statistically significant positive correlation between unemployment and male
suicide, and an even more significant negative correlation between economic
growth and male suicide. Economic depression, it seems, does cause some men to
end it all.
However, that wasn’t what the authors set
out to prove. There is already substantial evidence that suicide rates rise in
recessions. For example, this paper published in the British Medical Journal
shows positive correlation between the 2008 economic recession and higher
suicide rates across a wide range of countries.
No, the authors set out to prove that
“austerity” is a DIRECT cause of suicide in general, and particularly for older
people affected by cuts to their fixed incomes. And I’m afraid they failed.
They simply did not adequately demonstrate correlation between government
spending cuts and suicide rates, let alone a causative relationship. The best
they could do was show statistical significance at the 5% confidence level
between government spending cuts and male suicide rates only (not
age-dependent) for data from 1968-2011. But they did not control for the effects
of the 2008 financial crisis - which as the BMJ paper cited above shows, raised
suicide rates in many countries. That omission alone means the data set is
compromised. With weak statistical significance and a compromised data set, the
findings are insufficiently robust. They do not “prove” that Greek government
spending cuts increased suicide rates. There was a slightly stronger
relationship between deficit reduction and suicide rates – but deficit
reduction itself is not necessarily due to what we normally call “austerity”,
namely government spending cuts and tax rises.
Failing to prove their primary hypothesis to
a sufficiently robust level was bad enough. But they completely failed to prove
their secondary hypothesis, namely that older people were more likely to commit
suicide under austerity. And that is because of a serious problem with the
data. Their age cohort data ends in 2009. The Greek debt crisis blew up in 2010
and austerity measures were imposed after that. Government spending reductions
in the 1988-2009 data either did not exist or were so tiny they were
practically irrelevant. In short, there was no austerity during that period. It
is therefore not possible with this data set to prove that government spending
cuts cause increased suicides among older people. The regression does show that
there MIGHT be some relationship between government spending cuts and suicides
among older men. But it is pretty weak: the best they can show is occasional
significance at the 5% or 10% level. It does not constitute “proof”.
Media reports such as this one in the NY
Post saying “Draconian austerity measures instituted as a result of the Greek
debt crisis have taken a dramatic toll on male suicides” are just wrong. The
paper does not prove that there is any direct connection between austerity measures
imposed due to the debt crisis and suicide rates in Greece. Indeed it cannot: available data for suicides
ends in 2011, before the bulk of the austerity measures came into force.
Suicides in 2009 and 2010 really can’t be attributed to Troika austerity
measures - but they could be attributed to the 2008 financial crisis.
But it is possible that austerity measures
in Greece and elsewhere could have indirectly caused suicide rates to rise.
There is plenty of evidence that recession and unemployment are associated with
higher suicide rates, especially among men, and it is entirely possible that
austerity measures delayed economic recovery after the financial crisis and, in
the case of Greece, turned the post-crisis recession into a prolonged and severe
depression.
I am disappointed therefore that the authors
chose to try to prove a direct link between austerity and suicide rates,
particularly among older people. This was never going to be possible: it is
notoriously hard to prove that general fiscal changes have specific welfare
effects (everyone tends to resort to anecdote), and in this case the data is
not good enough anyway. What is really needed is proof that severe government
spending cuts cause persistently negative economic growth and high unemployment.
If such a relationship could be shown beyond reasonable doubt, then we could
reasonably conclude that austerity does indeed cause suicide rates to rise.
Until then, the case remains unproven.
(Πηγή: Forbes.com)
