Economics of Suicide : An Intertemporal Analysis

The existing body of work on suicide has characterised it as a choice opted by an individual who is neurologically disturbed. Adam Smith himself has supported this notion in his book ‘Theory of Moral Sentiment’. However David Hume in his treatise ‘Of Suicide’ has described it as a rational choice of an individual. This paper views the phenomenon of suicide through an economist’s lens . The idea of this paper was conceived from a chapter of the book ‘Economics Uncut: A Complete Guide to Life, Death and Misadventure’ wherein the writer explains suicide through a microeconomic model. The paper is loosely based on Hamermesh and Soss’s study on Economics of Suicide wherein they worked on cross- sectional and time series data of U.S states to reach the conclusion that the incidence of suicide decreases with rise in permanent income of individuals and increases as an individual grows older. This paper analyses time series data of suicide in India and attempts to verify the results of Hamermesh and Soss’s study. Secondary data from NCRB has been used for the study. The objective of the paper is to better understand the dynamics and trends in suicide in India through economic analysis and find out the underlying causes behind such a drastic choice. The results of our study can add to the existing canon on economics of suicide and can be used for further analysis by upcoming researchers. Through this study we have also attempted to address the research gap in economic modelling of a qualitative aspect like suicide, in Indian context