According to an article in the Pacific Standard, a couple of studies have found a crisis-related
uptick in suicides in Greece. The authors of one even allege that “at least 10,000 additional economic
suicides between 2008 and 2010” can be attributed to the country’s economic slump. The title of the PS
article is meant to be a bit disturbing (“When Economic Instability Turns
Deadly”), so it got me thinking. Has anyone tried to assess the human cost of
economic transitions – for example, with the methodology used to calculate war
casualties? And not just in a country like Greece where the economy has
contracted so much. How about, say, Bulgaria – which Bulgarian political
commentator and social entrepreneur Ivan Krastev recently included among the
East European countries that had possessed the social preconditions for
successful reforms (“A Greek Farce, Then Gloom,” NYT, 16 July 2015)? Or Ghana, which (with the help of a major debt
write-off) has enjoyed a prolonged period of political stability and entered
the club of middle-income countries – to recently face new financial and social
woes? This, by the way, would be a fun topic for a quantitative Ph.D.
dissertation.
