A Worldwide Study of the Relationship Between Gini Coefficients and Suicide Rates

Background: The Gini coefficient measures how much the distribution of income or consumption within an economy deviates from an equal distribution. However, there has been a paucity of research examining the association between Gini coefficients and suicide rates in the countries of the world. Objective: To prove the hypothesis that the higher the Gini coefficient, the larger the relative deprivation and the higher the suicide rate, and further to verify the effect of relative deprivation on suicidality. Methods: Suicide rates for different countries were obtained from the World Health Organization (WHO) website. The Gini coefficients for the countries were taken from the World Bank website. Correlations were performed between the suicide rates and the Gini coefficients. SPSS 21.0 was used to analyze the data. Results: Overall the suicide rates and Gini coefficients decreased slightly from 2017 to 2019. There was an overall negative association between Gini coefficients and suicide rates in the countries studied. However, a different trend was observed in lower-income countries, where higher Gini coefficients were associated with higher suicide rates. The correlation between Gini coefficients and the suicide rates of females was larger than males in low- and high-income countries. However, the correlation for males was larger than females in lower-middle- and upper-middle-income countries. Conclusions: Current data show that Gini coefficients are negatively associated with suicide rates, but there is a different trend for lower-income countries. Economic development and the strain theory of suicide can be applied to explain the effects of relative deprivation on suicidality.