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China facts of the day
Suicide is now the biggest single killer among young Chinese people, the country's first national suicide survey has shown.
Each year more than a quarter of a million people in China are taking their own lives, the study showed.
But the most significant finding was that, unlike almost everywhere else in the world, more women than men commit suicide.
Suicide now accounts for a third of all deaths among women in the countryside.
In the study, to be published in British medical journal, The Lancet, US and Chinese researchers discovered there was apparently a significantly lower rate of mental illness among those committing suicide than would be the case in the West.
Dr Michael Phillips, who helped lead the study, told the BBC that while 90-95% of those taking their own lives in the West suffered significant mental illness at the time of attempting suicide, around a third of those in China did not.
...the biggest single reason why so many suicide attempts in China are successful is their method.
Nearly two-thirds of them are by consuming pesticides and powerful rat poisons which are extremely easy to buy in China.
Here is the story, courtesy of www.2blowhards.com.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 30, 2006 at 04:13 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
250,000 suicides in a population of a billion is a suicide rate of 25 per 100,000. Is that a lot or a little compared to developed countries?
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Jun 30, 2006 8:29:15 AM
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/finaldeaths03_tables.pdf#2
The CDC says that 31,484 deaths were attributed to suicide in 2003 in the United States. That is about 10.8 per 100,000.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad303.pdf
Figure 14 on Page 11 has a graph of suicide rates across several (mostly European) countries. France is over 20, most are between 10 and 15. The fuller report and the raw data should be available.
Posted by: Sam at Jun 30, 2006 9:58:15 AM
The CDC reports 30,622 suicides in 2001 (http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm) and I'm guessing there were 280 million Americans that year. So I come up with a U.S. rate of about 11 per 100,000--less than half China's. But since I did the math myself and I am nearly totally innumerate, no one should rely on my calculations.
Posted by: Dan at Jun 30, 2006 10:00:12 AM
I spent 6 weeks in China recently and loved it there! What an amazing people.... Wherever we see people oppressed by others -- you see these statistics. And they exist in every nation -- It makes me wonder, how can we use this sad and revealing post to value life around us more? What do you think?
Brain Based Business
Posted by: Ellen Weber at Jun 30, 2006 10:57:17 AM
My question is: How many of the reported suicides are actually homicides? (I don't know enough about the poisons involved if this is feasible.)
We'd need to compare the Chinese homicide rates as well as the suicide rates to get a better picture overall of what might be going on.
Posted by: Macneil at Jun 30, 2006 11:16:01 AM
That is interesting, then. It'd be worth seeing how it changed over time, too.
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Jun 30, 2006 12:09:40 PM
Clearly the Chinese government needs to solve this problem with mass regulation on pesticides and rat poison. I guess they have a shortage of tall buildings in China.
Posted by: BillWallace at Jun 30, 2006 4:24:22 PM
But it's a workers' paradise?!?
Posted by: Christopher Meisenzahl at Jun 30, 2006 6:24:53 PM
I doubt that 90-95% of suicides in the West are mentally ill. A large fraction of all suicides in the U.S. are terminally ill men (seldom women) who decide to move up the inevitable by a few months.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jul 2, 2006 2:45:10 AM
The choice of method may well explain the sex ratio for suicides.
I know that in Australia, the ratios are that 10 times as many women as men "attempt" suicide, but far more men "succeed" in killing themselves. The general explanation is that women tend to go for poisons and overdoses (which don't work very well) while men go for guns, jumping and high speed car crashes.
In a country where deadly poisons are more common, the women will succeed more often, giving both a higher death rate, and a higher rate for women than for men.
Meanwhile on this very subject, I was told only a few days ago that one cause of the suicide rate is the extremely stressful exam period for students. This is reminiscent of the infamous Japanese "exam hell" (which contributes to the high Japanese rate of suicide) but with the added stress that even a poor result in Japan doesn't lead to a lifestyle anywhere near as poor as in China.
Posted by: Patrick at Jul 2, 2006 7:11:15 PM
The fact that suicide is more common for women indicates that cultures don't adjust quickly, even when there are shortages. The countryside has been short of women (relative to the number of men) for several decades now. The balance may have gone the other way in the civil war, Japan occupation, etc. But in the Great Leap Forward, young girls died much faster than anyone else (as is common in Confucian societies during times of famine).
More recently, the one child policy has led to a shortage of girls. Economic theory might suggest that girls and women would hence become more valuable, but that's only with enforceable 'property' rights (including the right to own oneself). In practice, it has led to more kidnappings of potential brides (who won't necessarily try to escape later, since their families might not take them back). This data on suicides hints that those that are lucky enough to have a wife in the countryside aren't cherishing her, perhaps because there are limited 'resale' markets.
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