Sunday, January 25, 2009

Immigration drives some to suicide: Here's a cross-national study abstract that reports a .13% increase in suicide for each 1% increase in immigration (supposedly due to lower social integration and culture shock).
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4 comments:

  1. Jim Bowery11:44 AM

    That's interesting and it is even more interesting that I just ran a similar ecological correlation suite on the United States, I got the following top Pearson correlation coefficients:

    89 with -PopulationMultiple2000to2001
    65 with -ForeignBornMultiple1990to2000
    61 with -TotalFertilityRate2003
    61 with -FertilityRate2003
    59 with -ImmigrantsMexicoPercapita1998
    58 with -MalesPer100Females2000
    56 with -AdultMalesPer100AdultFemales2000
    55 with -BirthRate2003
    44 with -AgeUnder18Percentage2000
    43 with MedianAge2000
    43 with -MethamphetamineUsingPercentHighSchoolFemales2001
    42 with Age65AndOverPercentage2000
    42 with -AirTrafficNonScheduledPassengersPercapita1999
    41 with -WhiteTotalFertilityRate2002

    Now, I'm probably one of the most anti-immigration people you'll ever meet, but it's hard to imagine a more contradictory result!

    What's going on here?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jim Bowery11:55 AM

    Of some interest here is that I just ran -ForeignBornPercapitaMultiple1990to2000 and the r went from 65 down to 40 -- not as strongly contradictory but an anti-correlation.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous7:01 AM

    Could you enlighten us statistically challenged on what a Pearson correlation coefficient means?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jim Bowery11:44 AM

    Pearson correlation coefficient is what people usually mean when they say "correlation". It's basically how well two variables (x,y) form a perfect line and whether that line has a positive or negative slope. It's basically how we know anything about the world (induction), and we know nothing of the world by pure implication.

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