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Journal of Socio-Economics 31 (2002) 215–231 Economic welfare, civil liberty, and suicide: an empirical investigation Jochen Jungeilges a , Gebhard Kirchgässnerb,∗ a University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany b University of St. Gallen, SIAW-HSG, Institutsgebäude Dufourstr. 48, CH-9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland Abstract Performing an international cross-section study for 30 countries, this paper investigates the depen- dence of suicides rates on real income per capita, real income growth and civil liberty. Suicide rates are transformed into logits, and weighted seemingly unrelated Zellner–Aitken estimates are obtained for both sexes and seven age groups, where the weights correspond to the size of the population in each of the subgroups of the different countries. All three variables have significant effects on the suicide rate. The economic variables have a positive influence: the higher real per capita income and/or real economic growth, the higher the suicide rate is. But these results vary between age groups: income plays a more important role for the middle age group, whereas economic growth is more important for the older people. Moreover, older women react stronger to income growth than older men. With respect to civil liberty, we get ‘expected’ results: the more liberty, the lower the suicide rates. © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. JEL classification: L32, G22 Keywords: Happiness; Suicide; Welfare; Liberty 1. Introduction In recent years, the question under which conditions people are really ‘happy’ has re- ceived new attention by economists.1 One of the main (old) questions is still: can money buy happiness?2 There is a lot of evidence that people look at their position in the income sched- ule of their society and, insofar, money might be able to buy happines