Over the past ten years the number of suicides in Thailand has been consistently ranging between 3 600 to 4 000 people every year To be more specific there were 3 941 and 3 950 suicides in 2005 and 2014 respectively Although there was a sharp decrease of 329 in 2006 the number of suicides has generally been increasing over the last decade Figure 1 Similarly in 2005 the suicide rate in Thailand was 6 34 per 100 000 people and it drops to 6 08 per 100 000 people in 2014 However it can be clearly seen that the suicide rate has generally been increasing since 2011 at higher than 6 suicides per 100 000 inhabitants Figure 2 The question of whether or not economic factors such as level of income debt unemployment rate as well as social factors would leads to high suicide rates of individuals has received wide attention among scholars A huge number of empirical studies using data of developed economies have been reviewed in an attempt to combat rising suicide rates worldwide Hamermesh and Soss 1974 Kimenyi and Shugart 1986 Yang 1992 Ausendar 1993 Chuang and Huang 1997 Lin 2006 Chen Choi and Sawada 2008 Minoiu and Andres 2008 Halicioglu and Andres 2010 However the research on this topic using data of Thailand is very limited In particular there is only the work of Punyasawatsut 2011 which used time series exploration in order to find out the determinants which may explain the suicide rate in Thailand My research in contrast employs the cross sectional analysis as it can better explain the impact of cultural social and economic differences among regions
