Sociology of individual tragedies. Homicides and suicides: Cross-country cluster analysis

Russian Journal of Economics. 2019. No. 5. P. 251–276.

Grigoryev L. M., Поповец Л. А.

Sociology and psychology closely study the phenomena of homicide and suicide among countries of the world, but both remain little studied in the context of the levels of countries’ development and international comparisons. Developed countries (in terms of GDP per capita) show a decrease in the relative rate of homicides, but the case of suicides is not so explicit. This paper examines the relative levels of suicides and homicides all around the world in the context of socio-economic indices as well as indicators of mental health among the population. Addressing the example of the BRICS countries, the authors discuss the impact of economic imbalances on homicide and suicide levels. The analysis demonstrates that social inequality determines cross-country differences for relative levels in terms of homicide rates, including the course of events in the post-Soviet countries. And in the case of Russia, it is possible to make a conclusion not only about the presence of deep inter-regional differences, but also about a large-scale reduction in the frequency of two tragic phenomena between 2000 and 2017 during the economic recovery.

Keywords: sociology, Russia, BRICS, inequality, suicides, homicides, transformation