Knocking on heaven’s door? Protestantism and suicide

Becker, Sascha O. und Wößmann, Ludger (2011): Knocking on heaven’s door? Protestantism and suicide. Warwick economics research paper series (TWERPS),

Abstract

We model the effect of Protestant vs. Catholic denomination in an economic theory of suicide, accounting for differences in religious-community integration, views about man’s impact on God’s grace, and the possibility of confessing sins. We test the theory using a unique micro-regional dataset of 452 counties in 19th century Prussia, when religiousness was still pervasive. Our instrumental-variable model exploits the concentric dispersion of Protestantism around Wittenberg to circumvent selectivity bias. Protestantism had a substantial positive effect on suicide in 1816-21 and 1869-71. We address issues of bias from mental illness, misreporting, weather conditions, within-county heterogeneity, religious concentration, and gender composition.

• Dokumententyp: Paper
• Fakultät: Volkswirtschaft ; Volkswirtschaft > Lehrstühle > CESifo-Professur für Empirische Innovationsökonomik
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 330 Wirtschaft
• Sprache: Englisch