Dark contrasts: The paradox of high rates of suicide in happy places

• Published in: Journal of economic behavior & organization 2011-12, Vol.80 (3), p.435-442
• Main Authors: Daly, Mary C., Oswald, Andrew J., Wilson, Daniel, Wu, Stephen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: American people; Americas; Death rate; Economic theory; Happiness; Individual differences; Life satisfaction; Paradoxes; Random sampling; Relative comparisons; Risk factors; Sample surveys; Studies; Suicide; Suicides & suicide attempts; U.S.A; Well-being
• ISSN: 0167-2681; 1879-1751
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2011.04.007

► We show that adjusted suicide rates tend to be highest in happy places. ► We use data on a random sample of more than one million individuals across the US states. ► We replicate our key result on country-level data for Europe. ► The explanation for this empirical paradox is currently unknown. ► It may be that it is particularly painful to be unhappy if surrounded by happy individuals. Suicide kills more Americans each year than die in motor accidents. Yet its causes remain poorly understood. We suggest in this paper that the level of others’ happiness may be a risk factor for suicide (although one's own happiness likely protects one from suicide). Using U.S. and international data, the paper provides evidence for a paradox: the happiest places tend to have the highest suicide rates. The analysis appears to be the first published study to be able to combine rich individual-level data sets—one on life satisfaction in a newly available random sample of 1.3 million Americans and another on suicide decisions among an independent random sample of about 1 million Americans—to establish this dark-contrasts paradox in a consistent way across U.S. states. The study also replicates the finding for the Western industrialized nations. The paradox, which holds individual characteristics constant, is not an artifact of population composition or confounding factors (or of the ecological fallacy). We conclude with a discussion of the possible role of relative comparisons of utility.