YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT, ECONOMIC DEPRIVATION AND SUICIDE

The objective of this article is to shed light on the relationship bet ween unemployment and financial hardship/recession on the one hand and suicide of young persons on the other, based partly on a review of th e literature and partly on a tentative analysis of empirical data from Sweden. Aggregated data have been used to produce a descriptive analy sis of the changes in suicide rate with time, changes in the unemploym ent rate and the proportions of those in receipt of social allowance. Individual level data have been used to perform a cohort study. The re sults based on aggregated data show that no signs of positive links be tween suicide rates and unemployment/social allowance recipients figur es can be found among Swedish young persons during the last decade. Th e results from the cohort analysis show a clear link between economic deprivation on the one hand and suicide on the other during the second part of the 1980s.