Suicide and socioeconomic determinants in Canada:
beyond morality and philosophy
Evan Lau
1,2
•
Siti Nur Zahara Hamzah
3
•
Sandra Chia Chia Tan
1
•
Biagio Simonetti
4
Published online: 20 June 2016
Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016
Abstract This paper provides new and exciting insight of suicide between genders in
Canada for 39 years from a socio-economic perspective. A theoretical framework based on
sound economic theory of suicide using Vector Autoregression (VAR) model to establish
meaningful relationships between variables incorporated. Additional causality test and
beyond sample analysis (forecasting) will be helpful inbeautifying the linkages among the
variables employed in this study. It is suggested that both female and male suicidal
behaviour can be explained by socio-economic indicators. The findings provide useful
insights for policy makers and suicide related agencies to perform a novel approach in
dealing with suicides in addition to traditional behavioural correction and counselling
strategies in hand. This study should also be helpful in understanding suicide from a broad
perspective and analysing suicide in a new economic framework of rational choice theory.
Keywords Suicide Á Socio-economic indicators Á Cointegration Á VECM Á Canada
1 Introduction
David Foster Wallace in his book, Infinite Jest wrote that, ‘‘The person in whom its
invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped
person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake
& Evan Lau
lphevan@feb.unimas.my
1
Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak,
94300 Kota Samarahan, Malaysia
2
Centre for Business, Economics and Finance Forecasting (BEFfore), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak,
94300 Kota Samarahan, Malaysia
3
School of Foundation Programmes, University of Reading Malaysia, Persiaraan Graduan Kota
Ilmu, Educity, 79200 Iskandar Puteri, Johor, Malaysia
4
Department of Law, Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods, University of Sannio, Via
delle Puglie, 8282100 Benevento, Italy
123
Qual Quant (2017) 51:1843–1858
DOI 10.1007/s11135-016-0370-x
@Phil_Robichaud
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