A spatial econometric analysis of suicide in Brazil
Suicide; Spatial econometrics; Panel data; First difference.
The present study aims to analyze the suicide rates recorded in Brazilian municipalities in the years 2000 and 2010, associating this phenomenon with economic, meteorological and social variables. The analysis starts from the ideas defended by Durkheim (2000), who sees suicide as a social problem, not an individual one. We used data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Department of Informatics of the SUS (DATA-SUS), and the meteorological information base of the University of Delaware. For this, we used a balanced space panel with first difference, as well as other tools of spatial econometrics, considering the minimum distance matrix, which takes into account that each municipality has at least one neighbor. With the focused test, we found that the most appropriate spatial model would be the spatial lag model (SAR), showing that the dependent variable (suicide rate) is partially determined by the values of the same variable in the neighbors. Among the main results, it was found that there is a relative overflow effect of suicide among Brazilian municipalities. In addition, it can be evidenced that the variables aging rate, unemployment, Gini and average temperature have a positive relationship with the suicide rate; On the other hand, the dependency ratio, extreme poverty, the MHDI, the divorce rate and precipitation are negatively related to the variable of interest.