Neighborhood context can change the effect of a socio-demographic attribute on the risk of suicide. Eight hypotheses about the interactions between neighborhood composition, ethnicity, income, and socially disadvantaged propositions are proposed based on social support, social comparison, and social regulation mechanisms. They are tested with a population-based dataset of all adults (1.4 million) who lived in the greater Stockholm area in the 1990s. On one hand, multilevel analysis shows that suicide risk increases with the level of affluence in one's neighborhood, particularly among individuals with low income. This supports the notion that income comparison can have negative consequences. On the other hand, social welfare recipients are less likely to commit suicide when there are other social welfare recipients in the neighborhood. Suicide risk among immigrants deceases with the proportion of co-ethnics in the neighborhood, confirming previous findings on social support and suicide. However, further analyses show that the protection effect of having co-ethnic neighbors is limited to immigrants from countries with low suicide rates. This study shows that administrative data can be used to examine neighborhood effects on rare outcomes. The findings are relevant to the contemporary trends towards rising income inequality and ethnic diversity.

中文翻译：

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比较就等于绝望？斯德哥尔摩社区构成和自杀的全人口研究


社区环境可以改变社会人口特征对自杀风险的影响。基于社会支持、社会比较和社会调节机制，提出了关于社区构成、种族、收入和社会弱势命题之间相互作用的八个假设。他们使用 20 世纪 90 年代居住在斯德哥尔摩大区的所有成年人（140 万）的人口数据集进行了测试。一方面，多层次分析表明，自杀风险随着社区富裕程度的增加而增加，尤其是低收入人群。这支持了收入比较可能产生负面后果的观点。另一方面，当附近有其他社会福利受益人时，社会福利受益人自杀的可能性较小。移民死亡的自杀风险与社区中同族裔的比例有关，这证实了之前关于社会支持和自杀的研究结果。然而，进一步分析表明，同族邻居的保护作用仅限于来自自杀率低国家的移民。这项研究表明，行政数据可用于检查邻里对罕见结果的影响。研究结果与收入不平等和种族多样性日益加剧的当代趋势相关。