Socioeconomic Development, Suicide and Religion: A Test of Durkheim's Theory of Religion and Suicide

Abstract

Modern multivariate analysis on cross-national samples has challenged Durkheim's observation that Catholics are less likely to commit suicide than Protestants. Previous reanalysis of Durkheim's data has shown that once socioeconomic differences are controlled, Protestant and Catholic nations have had and probably continue to have similar suicide rates. A better test of Durkheim's feeling that religion has an independent role in suppressing suicide is to compare Christianity with another religion. Durkheim's theories, after all, were based not only on Christians, but also upon Jews, who had very low suicide rates, but there are too few Jews in national populations to permit cross-national research. Today Islam represents a world religion which enjoys a very high degree of fervor and integration among its followers. We present three case studies to support this view. Then using a 71 nation cross-national analysis, we show that Islam does have an independent effect in lowering suicide, thus confirming Durkheim's hypothesis that religion itself is important as an independent factor in studying suicide.