Does family support decrease suicide rates? A panel data analysis of contemporary Europe

Abstract: This thesis examines the suicide rates of 11 European countries from 2001 and 2017 to investigate a potential relationship between the level of family support and suicide rates. Age-group and gender-specific suicide rates are employed. In order to account for the level of family support, an index is created using Principal Component Analysis which includes different proxy variables for the level of family support in society. A significant relationship is found for middle-aged males and females, in the age groups of 35-54 and 45-54 respectively. The most significant effect is for males aged 45 to 54 years, where one standard deviation increase in the level of family support decreases the suicide rate with 12.55 (measured as the number of suicides per 100 000 males). Unemployment rates are only significant for women aged 35-44 and men aged 55-64. Our data tells us that family support is more important for people in child-bearing ages, perhaps because of fewer possibilities to social contact for this age group, thereby increasing the importance of strong family ties. Future research could investigate more into the role of family support, by enhancing our measure and employing more countries and over a longer timespan to see whether the effect still holds.