In reading my prior post, one might interpret my observation as implying that bankers' decisions have less serious consequences than the decision of pilots. Unfortunately, that may not be the case.
Data collected by C. Pritchard (1990) suggests that suicides rise by 1.72 per million for every 1% rise in unemployment*, which has increased by 4.2% from May 2008 to May 2009. This would suggest that the deteriorating economy has contributed to about 1,700 additional deaths in the last year. This may be a conservative estimate since it does not take into account other factors such as home foreclosures. By contrast there were on average only 66** accident related aviation fatalities a year over the period 1989-2008, and only 16 per years between 2002 and 2008***.
However the point of my last post still stands; paying people more money does not seem to make us any safer.
* Panel data regression based on this data available on request.
** Deaths caused by an illegal act are excluded from the calculation.*** 2009 however is turning out to be a bad year - 49 died in the regional air crash in February in Buffalo, NY, the incident that prompted the Senate hearings mentioned below, and 228 perished in the Air France Rio to Paris flight on June 1st. Pilot error may have been a factor in the first; the cause of the second has not been determined.
Pritchard, C. 1990. Suicide, unemployment and gender variations in the Western world 1964–1986. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 25(2): 73-80.
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