Vol. 10, No. 1 (2014): 97-110
Abstract
This study explores the correlates of the suicidality in Hong Kong with its socio-economic predictors. Hong Kong witnessed its economic decline and its improvement in the last decade with 2003 as the turning point. After applying Poisson regression models on the data, it was found that individual payroll and property price indices were closely associated with the monthly suicide counts in Hong Kong, whereas unemployment rate and average rent index were not observed statistically significant. The results reinforce the findings that structural socio-economic conditions generally have a substantial impact on suicidality and that unemployment rates may not always be correlated with suicide. This study recommends taking into account of some alternative macroeconomic variables, namely property price and individual payroll, to predict suicide rates.
Author’s bio
Tin-yuet Ting is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States. His research interests include social movements, new media use, global and transnational studies, and sociological theory. Recently he has been undertaking fieldwork research on the use of digital media for contentious politics in East Asian societies.
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