title: Economic and Sociological Correlates of Suicides: Multilevel Analysis of the Time Series Data in the United Kingdom.
abstract: For the effects of social integration on suicides, there have been different and even contradictive conclusions. In this study, the selected economic and social risks of suicide for different age groups and genders in the United Kingdom were identified and the effects were estimated by the multilevel time series analyses. To our knowledge, there exist no previous studies that estimated a dynamic model of suicides on the time series data together with multilevel analysis and autoregressive distributed lags. The investigation indicated that unemployment rate, inflation rate, and divorce rate are all significantly and positively related to the national suicide rates in the United Kingdom from 1981 to 2011. Furthermore, the suicide rates of almost all groups above 40 years are significantly associated with the risk factors of unemployment and inflation rate, in comparison with the younger groups.
authors.affiliation: PACM & Department of Mathematics, State University of New York Buffalo State, Buffalo, NY.
authors.forename: Bruce Qiang
authors.initials: BQ
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, Shandong University School of Public Health and the Center for Suicide Prevention Research, China, State University of New York Buffalo State, Buffalo, NY.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D004243:Divorce; D005260:Female; D059066:Gross Domestic Product; D006801:Humans; D007250:Inflation, Economic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012307:Risk Factors; D013405:Suicide / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014478:Unemployment; D006113:United Kingdom; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: ARIMA models; economy; forensic science; multilevel analysis; social factors; suicide; time series