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Miguel7501 t1_isc2oc3 wrote

Reply to comment by Charizard3535 in [OC] Suicide Rate vs GDP per capita for various countries. Notice that the upper right triangle is almost empty i.e. generally increase in GDP per capita results in decrease in suicide rates. by ankuprk

But then again it shows that there's a clear trend even without accounting for inequality.

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BaronVonCrunch t1_isc43dc wrote

Does it, though? There are only nine countries with the GDP per capita to even potentially make the upper right quadrant. And those nine countries appear (eyeballing it) to average somewhere around the median for suicide rates.

Desperate poverty certainly seems to significantly elevate suicide risks in some places, but at higher income levels it seems to hover around a fairly median level. It doesn’t appear that the correlation is super strong beyond a few outliers.

It is extraordinarily difficult to find a consistent causal factor for suicide. For each potential factor - income, economic opportunity, family life, rural vs urban, etc - there are some regions that seem to fit the hypothesis, but there are many others that completely confound it.

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Deuteronomious t1_isc9phk wrote

I agree that it doesn't really show correlation. It is just a Gaussian distribution at around 6-10 suicides per 100,000 and all countries on the far right are just richer but they don't seem to have significantly lower suicide rates. The upper right quadrant is empty because only five countries in total out of 200 have a high enough suicide rate to be in the upper half and none of these are one of the richest nine in the world

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DoobieBrotherhood t1_isdedqo wrote

I mean, if you draw a line of best fit for the data, then it definitely shows a correlation. Just because it doesn’t form a perfect curve doesn’t negate the correlation.

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100dylan99 t1_iscd9bh wrote

What is the trend? I do not see any trends whatsover. It seems like there is zero correlation. Most countries are between 0 and 20 GDP pc and 0-20 suicides pc.

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