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Using recently obtained suicide rates and economic development indicators for 60 countries, this study investigates the effects of modernization on suicide throughout the world. Results support the hypothesis that high suicide rates are related to modernization but with revisions. Although suicide is negatively correlated with population growth indicators and positively correlated with quality of life indicators, in multiple regression analyses with all other factors controlled, the population growth factor is a much better predictor of suicide rates than the quality of life factor. This finding holds true for both developing and developed countries when the two subsamples were tested separately. The population increase theory of suicide is highlighted as an explanation of suicide rates in the world, and ramifications of the theory are discussed.
Modernization theory postulates that modernization is a lengthy and irreversible progress through which all contemporary societies increasingly come to resemble one another (Rostow, 1978). According to this theory, modernized societies share such characteristics as nuclear families, secular religions, formal education, high mobility, and secondary group relations. As one of the early advocates of modernization theory, Emile Durkheim (1951) attributed suicides generally to the social factors that are basically the consequences of modernization. Empirical evidence from sociological research since Durkheim has generally confirmed the positive correlation between modernization and suicide rates in the world. Nevertheless, countries modernized at the same level do not necessarily have the same suicide rate. One criticism of modernization theory is that it neglects the importance of culture and history in a society's economic development (Wallerstein, 1974). Because modernization is usually measured by several different social economic indicators, some indicators may be more strongly related to suicide rates than others. The purpose of this article is to conduct an analytical study of the modernization factors that are exemplified in different countries all over the world so as to investigate their effects on suicide rates.
The Theoretical Model
Modernization is understood as a social and economic process toward industrialization, urbanization, and secularization. In Durkheim's (1951) view, egoism and anomie are unavoidable consequences of modernization because industrialization, urbanization, and secularization usually break ties between the individual and group life. Specifically, the ensuing decline in subordination of the individual to the group (i.e., increased egoism) increases suicide potential, and...