Steven Stack

MARITAL STATUS AND HAPPINESS: A 17 NATION STUDY

The literature on marital status and happiness has neglected comparative analysis, cohabitation, and gender-specific analysis. It is not clear if the married-happiness relationship is consistent across nations, if it is stronger than a cohabitation-happiness link, and if it applies to both genders. We address these issues using data from 17 national surveys. A multiple regression analysis determined that the relationship between marital status and happiness holds in 16 of the 17 nations and the strength of the association does not vary significantly in 14 of the 17 nations. Being married was 3.4 times more closely tied to the variance in happiness than was cohabitation, and marriage increases happiness equally among men and women. Marriage may affect happiness through two intervening processes: the promotion of financial satisfiction and the improvement of health. These intervening processes did not replicate for cohabitants. Key Words: financial satisfaction, marital happiness, marital status, marriage. Considerable support has been found for the thesis that marriage is associated with higher levels of personal well-being. This includes work on personal well-being (Bradburn, 1969; Coombs, 1991; Glenn, 1975; Gove, Hughes, & BriggsStyle, 1990; Horwitz, White, & Howell-White, 1996; Kessler & Essex, 1982; Mastekassa, 1992, 1993; Williams, 1988), health (Hahn, 1993; Joung et al., 1997; Ross, Mirowsky, & Goldsteen, 1990; Verbrugge, 1979), mortality (Goldman & Hu, 1993; Gove, 1973; Hu & Goldman, 1990; Rogers, 1995; Trovato & Lauris, 1989), and suicide (Stack, 1990; Stack & Wasserman, 1995). The advantage of the married over those who are not married appears to hold true for a specific indicator of well-being-global happiness. Studies, primarily based on data from the United States, have provided evidence that married persons report higher levels of personal happiness than persons of any unmarried status (Burt, 1987; Glenn & Weaver, 1979; Gove, Hughes, & BriggsStyle, 1983; Williams, 1988; see reviews in Weerasinghe & Tepperman, 1994, and Ross, 1995). In some multivariate models, marital status has been the most important predictor of happiness (Burt, 1987; Davis, 1984; Glenn & Weaver, 1979; Gove et al., 1983; Williams, 1988). Several issues have been neglected in the previous research. First. most of the evidence is based on data from the U.S. Research based disproportionately on one nation is in need of replication (e.g., Kohn, 1987). Further work is needed to see if the findings will replicate in nations with different institutional and cultural frameworks. For example, the U.S. has the highest divorce rate in the world (United Nations, 1988). In nations with low rates of divorce, there may be less support for divorce, thus trapping unhappy people in marriage and lowering the mean level of happiness among the married. Second, comparative work is needed in order to weight the importance of marital status against national character in the shaping of happiness (Inglehart, 1990). It may be, for example, that national character is more important than marital status in explaining cross-national differences in levels of happiness. Research based on a single nation, which is typically the case in happiness research, cannot, by definition, test this proposition (Glenn & Weaver 1988; Gove et al., 1983; Joung et al., 1997). Third, previous research has neglected the status of cohabitant. According to the social integration theory of happiness (e.g., Umberson, 1987), it may be that marriage does not increase happiness any more than cohabitation. Fourth, much of the past research is marked by model misspecification (Glenn & Weaver, 1979; Gove et al., 1983). For example, few studies include religion and health in their models, although these factors, when included, often show powerful effects on happiness. Given that married people tend to be more religious and healthier than people who are not married, it is not clear if some of the past research is reporting a spurious relationship between marriage and happiness. …

The effect of religious commitment on suicide: a cross-national analysis.

Research on the relationship of religion and suicide has relied almost exclusively on the concept of religious integration as a causal variable. The present paper proposes an alternative linkage, based on the concept of religious commitment. A theory is developed that argues that a high level of commitment to a few life-preserving religious beliefs, values, and practices will lower suicide levels. Control variables are taken from the industrialization and the neglected genderequality perspectives on suicide. A multiple regression analysis of suicide rates from 25 nations indicates that religious commitment is negatively related to the total suicide rate. However, this relationship holds only forfemales, the group traditionally most committed to religion. Both the industrialization and gender-equality variables were more closely associated with the variance in ageand gender-specific suicide rates than was the religious variable.

Suicide: A decade review of the sociological literature

Major works on suicide are reviewed and classified into four analytic categories according to their theoretical emphasis: cultural, economic, modernization, and social integration perspectives. The research under these paradigms is assessed in terms of four themes. First, attention is drawn to research evidence that questions traditional theories. An example is Durkheims position on social class and suicide. Second, the review notes several new theories including Phillips’ imitation thesis and the authors own model of migrations effects on suicide. Third, the paper observes and reviews explanations of new trends in suicide rates such as the rapid increase in youth suicide and the decline in suicide among the elderly. Finally, the review calls attention to explanations of suicide, such as that linking suicide to low marital solidarity, that have withstood the test of the more rigorous empirical testing of recent times.

CELEBRITIES AND SUICIDE: A TAXONOMY AND ANALYSIS, 1948-1983*

Research on the impact of suicide stories in the media on imitative suicides has been marked by poor theory and undifferentiated indexes. This study focuses on celebrity suicides. It uses a taxonomy of celebrities based on Tardes laws of imitation and Paretos concept of elite. Propositions are drawn from differential identification theory, using mass cultural values and beliefs as points of identification. The imitation effect holds only for American entertainers and political celebrities, not for artists, villains, and the economic elite. The amount of publicity given to suicides was positively related to the monthly incidence of suicide, but problems common to the celebrities and the suicidal population (divorce, physical illness, and poor mental health) were not. An interactive model in which the impact of a suicide story is mediated by the suicidogenic mood of the media audience did not improve on the simple additive model. Age, gender, and race-specific suicide rates tended to support identification theory.

Public attitudes toward the police: A comparative study between japan and america

Comparative research on the police in Japan and in the United States is largely based on qualitative or participatory observation techniques. These studies in general seem to suggest that the Japanese public has a higher evaluation of their police than the Americans. The present study uses quantitative data from both countries and attempts to test the hypothesis that the Japanese public has higher confidence in their police than does the American public. Preliminary findings in the multivariate analysis indicate, surprisingly, that the Japanese have significantly lower confidence in their police compared to Americans.

The effect of religion on suicide ideation.

SummaryWork on the impact of religion on suicide has not yielded consistent results. Classic Durkheimian models stressing religious affiliation (Catholic vs Protestant) have been questioned in recent years and some authors have argued for a model based on the alternative conception of religious commitment (e.g. religiosity per se) as a prophylactic against suicide. Almost all of this work has been based on highly aggregated data where it is not known if nonreligious people account for the suicides. The present study tests both models with national data on 1,687 respondents. No support is found for the Durkheimian model at the individual level, but some is found for the religious commitment model: the greater the church attendance the lower the approval of suicide. The effect of religiosity on suicide ideation is independent of education, gender, marital status, and age.

Changes in suicide rates following media reports on celebrity suicide: a meta-analysis

Background A growing number of studies indicate that sensationalist reporting of suicide is associated with increases in suicide rates, but in the light of some negative findings, the issue has remained controversial. The aim of this study was to evaluate the best current evidence on the association between celebrity suicide stories and subsequent suicides. Methods Literature searches of six data sources (Medline, Psychlit, Communication Abstracts, Education Resources Information Center, Dissertation Abstracts and Australian Public Affairs Database (APAIS)) were conducted. Studies were included if they (1) adopted an ecological design, (2) focused on celebrity suicide, (3) had completed suicide as outcome variable, (4) analysed suicide rates across all suicide methods, (5) used data from after World War II and (6) satisfied basic quality criteria. Results 10 studies with totally 98 suicides by celebrities met the criteria. The pooled estimate indicated a change in suicide rates (suicides per 100 000 population) of 0.26 (95% CI 0.09 to 0.43) in the month after a celebrity suicide. There was substantial heterogeneity between studies, which was explained by the type of celebrity (entertainment elite vs others) and the region of study, as indicated by mixed-effects meta-regression. The region-of-study–specific effect of reporting a suicide by an entertainment celebrity was 0.64 (95% CI 0.55 to 0.73) in North America, 0.58 (95% CI 0.47 to 0.68) in Asia, 0.36 (95% CI −0.10 to 0.61) in Australia and 0.68 (95% CI 0.51 to 0.85) in Europe. There was no indication of publication bias. Conclusions Reports on celebrity suicide are associated with increases in suicides. Study region and celebrity type appear to have an impact on the effect size.

Occupation and Suicide

Objective. Research on occupation and suicide has neglected multivariate models. It is not clear, for example, if persons in alleged “high‐risk” occupations have high suicide risk because of occupational stress associated with the occupation or because of the demographic composition of the people in the occupation. The present study explores the relationship between occupation and suicide for 32 occupational groups. Methods. Data are from the national mortality file tapes, which cover 21 states. They refer to 9,499 suicides and 134,386 deaths from all other causes in 1990. Results. Bivariate logistic regression models find a total of 15 occupations with either significantly higher (e.g., dentists, artists, machinists, auto mechanics, and carpenters) or lower (e.g., clerks, elementary school teachers, cooks) risk than the rest of the working‐age population. Multivariate models that remove the demographic covariates of occupation find only eight occupations with greater or lower than expected risk of death by suicide. Conclusion. The results underscore the need for demographic controls in the assessment of occupational risk of suicide. They are consistent with a previous study based on data from England. The findings provide the first systematic evidence on the problem for the United States.

Support for the Death Penalty: A Gender-Specific Model

Research on the publics level of death penalty support (DPS) has neglected gender-specific models. While most previous work has shown that women have lower DPS than men, it is not clear whether traditional models of DPS will work for a sample restricted to women. The greater intolerance of the death penalty among women may overshadow or reduce the impact of traditional predictors of DPS among women. The present paper performs the first systematic gender-specific analysis of DPS. It uses national data from the 1990 General Social Survey. Measures of three variable sets were employed: symbolic orientations (e.g., political conservatism, authoritarianism); crime salience (e.g., victimization, fear); and demographic controls. The results of a stepwise logistic regression analysis showed that political conservatism has a direct effect on the DPS of both men and women. For women only, authoritarianism also had a direct effect on DPS. Further analysis showed that for women, six variables exert an indirect effect on DPS through political conservatism and five through authoritarianism. Only three indirect effects were found for men. However, none of the 16 variables analyzed had a significant gendered effect. Indicators of traditional models of DPS were found to work as well for women as they did for men.

The Effect of Religion on Suicide Ideology: An Analysis of the Networks Perspective

Previous work on religion and suicide has pursued a number of themes. The present work tested a new perspective which stresses the extent of social support networks in religions as protections against suicide. This study employed micro-level data on suicide attitudes as a check on previous findings based on ecological data. An analysis of national data from the General Social Surveys tended to support network theory. Churches promoting network involvement were found to have lower levels of suicide ideology. In particular, churches with conservative theologies, nonecumenical relations, and/or whose teachings are in tension with the larger society have lower levels of suicide ideology. These findings were independent of control variables drawn from alternative theories of suicide.