Arbeitspapier

Knocking on heaven's door? Protestantism and suicide

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.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 5773

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Cultural Economics: Religion
Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: Pre-1913
Thema
religion
suicide
Prussian economic history

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Becker, Sascha O.
Woessmann, Ludger
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
(wo)
Bonn
(wann)
2011

Handle
URN
urn:nbn:de:101:1-20110621322
Letzte Aktualisierung
20.09.2024, 08:23 MESZ

Datenpartner

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Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Becker, Sascha O.
  • Woessmann, Ludger
  • Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Entstanden

  • 2011

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