Does economic freedom push people into suicide? New evidence from developing and developed societies, 1980–2019

Abstract

This research paper investigates the impact of market liberalization on country-level suicide rates using a sample of 96 developing and developed countries from 1980 to 2019. We estimate fixed-effects panel regression models with robust standard errors clustered at the country level and conduct a variety of robustness checks, including using different estimators and disaggregating the data. We consistently find that the aggregate Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) measure is not statistically significantly related to within-country variations in age-standardized suicide rates, but some individual components are. Freedom to trade internationally weakly predicts increases in suicide rates, while sound money is associated with decreased suicide rates. The former result is highly vulnerable to different specifications. This study underscores the existence of a complex, non-intuitive relationship between market liberalization and suicide rates, suggesting that both critics and defenders of liberalization might be mistaken in making any unequivocal judgments about the process.