Stephen Brosnan (p)

Darja Reuschke

This paper analyses the socioeconomic determinants of suicide rates in the Republic of Ireland between 2008 and 2014. A random effects model is used to estimate the degree to which social, economic and environmental factors have influenced suicide rates across three groupings within Irish society – the general population, males and females.

The contribution of this study to the literature focusing on determinants of suicide is threefold. Firstly, this research fills an important gap in the literature exploring the socioeconomic determinants of suicide in Ireland. While much research has been conducted exploring the relationship between suicide and social and economic factors in Ireland at a national level, few studies have analysed this relationship at a disaggregated level. This study controls for NUTS3 regional effects and finds statistically significant differences in suicide rates across regions. Secondly, much of the current research on suicide rates in Ireland is conducted from a sociological, epidemiological and public health perspective. This paper analyses suicide rates from an economic perspective. Thirdly, the paper identifies key variables which have been overlooked in previous research analysing determinants of suicide in Ireland, such as third level education rates and divorce rates.

The results of this paper suggest that socioeconomic factors have statistically significant explanatory value when analysing variation in suicide rates across all groupings included. Economic indicators are found to have as significant effect on suicide rates in Ireland. However, consistent with previous studies the results differ across gender. Furthermore, demographic and social factors have contrasting effects across gender groupings in Ireland. Females tend to be more sensitive to changes in social and demographic factors while increases in the divorce rate is found to be positively related to female suicide rates and being negatively related to male suicide rates. These findings are consistent across a range of model specifications. It is important to note the particular regions are driving the results for particular socioeconomic variables.

Darja Reuschke (p)

Edel Walsh

Workers' well-being has received much attention in both the academic and policy world with the increase of 'nonstandard' work arrangements. A striking feature of more flexible work and labour markets in Western economies is working for themselves. Working for themselves has not only contributed to the greater temporal and contractual flexibilisation of work for both low skilled and high skilled workers but has also physically moved work away from employer's and business' premises. A sizeable body of research has investigated the individual well-being in nations and regions and the cross-country and cross-regional differences in individual well-being. However, little attention has been paid to the micro geographies of workers' everyday life and how these impact on their well-being. Only few studies have studied the life satisfaction of the self-employed. Evidence is even more limited with respect to differences within the diverse group of the self-employed (with or without employees, unemployed/employed previously) and no study has looked at homeworking of the self-employed. The aim of this paper is to assess whether working alone from home is good or bad for worker's well-being. UK data are used for the empirical analysis because here a large longitudinal micro dataset is available (the Understanding Society). Specifically, the data allow investigating (1) the effect working for themselves in the home has on men's and women's self-reported subjective well-being, and (2) whether this effect is different for men and women, both accounted for wider personal and regional circumstances that are likely to influence how individuals evaluate their life as a whole. Uniquely, because of the longitudinal nature of the data and the empirical focus on the estimation of variation in individual well-being within individuals findings of this study are robust to confounding effects of unobserved (time invariant) variables (e.g. personality traits). Results show that the home as a workplace impacts differently on men's and women's well-being in self-employment with consequences for policy that seeks to promote self-employment.

Frank Crowley , Edel Walsh (p)

Stephen Brosnan

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