Monday, September 22, 2014

Suicide in Ireland - The Facts

The Central Statistics Office released figures about suicide levels in Ireland recently which has again focused welcome attention on an issue that has probably touched everyone at some level during their life.

This is a lengthy blog containing a lot of statistics on suicide in Ireland but if you only have time to look at one piece of information, I would ask you to check out the final graph......which I believe is the most instructive and important.

The latest CSO release was to formally publish suicide figures for 2011 - the time lag being explained by the fact that the official total is often not able to be confirmed until inquests are held which can occasionally take a number of years following the person's actual death. For that reason the figures for 2012 and 2013 in the graph below are provisional.

The steep upward trend in male suicides since the 1970s is truly shocking. However, there is a slight caveat as the CSO does warn that the data should be interpreted with care due to population changes, attitudes to death from self-harm, the introduction of the Form 104 in 1967 and it's revision in 1998, the Criminal Law (Suicide) Act 1993 and other factors would affect trends over time. Nevertheless, the graph would suggest the number of people (particularly males) who take their own life has been steadily increasing over recent decades even allowing for such factors.
The landmark figure of 500 suicide deaths was breached for the first time in 1998 and has exceeded that number on five other occasions since. One can only speculate about the significance of the economic downturn which began in 2008 as a factor in some of the highest suicide totals occurring in the last few years, reaching a record high in 2011 with 554 deaths. On average 400-450 males die by suicide each year in recent times.

The number of females who died by suicide sadly peaked in 2008 - the first and only year ever that more than 100 women took their own life when the figure reached 120. Thankfully, the number has been coming down, falling to 79 in 2013 - the lowest total since 1996. Since the 1980s the annual total of female suicides has with rare exceptions remained in the range of 60-90 deaths.

The ratio of male to female suicides has generally been around 4:1, although that increased to 5:! in 2013.

Using the CSO figures again, if we translate them to the crude (unadjusted) rate of suicides per 100,000 population, the graph suggest the prevalence of suicide in Ireland actually peaked just prior to the new millennium in 2000 with our fast rising population clearly contributing to the downward trend in recent years. (Age standardised rates for death by suicide do not alter the results to any notable degree)


As for age....there does not appear to be any significant difference between males and females in the breakdown of suicide by age group when figures over several years are taken into consideration. However, in 2011, the male suicide rates were highest in the 45-64 age-group (28 per 100,000) while women’s were highest in the 25-44 age-group (almost 7 per 100,000). As the graph below shows, three-quarters of all suicides occur between 25 and 64 years.

A closer look at a breakdown of suicide rates by age and gender confirms that suicide is more prevalent among males than females across all age groups. Last year, there was a welcome decrease in the suicide rate among young males but a worrying increase among men aged 45-64 years. Among females, there was also an increase in the suicide rate among women aged 45-54 but a decrease in the next older age group 55-64 years.

Overall, the details confirm that the peak rates of suicide in recent years were experienced in 2011.

The CSO data also confirms that hanging, strangulation or suffocation is the most common method of suicide by both sexes, accounting for almost 80% of all such deaths last year. Use the interactive graph below to examine suicide deaths by a breakdown of method and gender.

The next interactive graph shows how suicide rates have changed in each of the 34 local authority areas over the past decade. The figures are for three-yearly moving averages - a statistic used to eliminate any blips which could distort general trends.

The graph shows how suicide rates have been persistently high in places like Cork City, while there has been an upward trend in the suicide rate for areas like Limerick City, Kerry and Wexford. In contrast, Fingal has had consistently low suicide rates, while counties like Longford have recorded a downward trend in their suicide rates.

Scroll down the column on the right and tick the box for the area you're interested in to see the relevant data.

The next graph shows the suicide rate in Ireland on a map. Although it is not easy to see, Limerick City had the highest rate in 2012, while it also highlights how Kerry, Cork City, South Tipperary, Wexford and Mayo also experienced above average rates, while the greater Dublin region has some of the lowest suicide rates in the country.

The national suicide average in 2012 was 11.2 deaths per 100,000 population.

So how does the Irish suicide rate compare with other European countries? The latest comparative figures are for 2010 which show the Irish suicide rate at 10.9 per 100,000 population was just below the EU-28 average of 11.8 per 100,000. However, the CSO warns that such figures should be interpreted with care as suicide registration methods vary between countries. Attitudes to suicide, the level of proof required for a verdict or classification of suicide etc., are also factors to be considered when comparing data between countries.
Or looked at another way..... The map shows no major patterns although the highest rates are in the Baltic states and central eastern Europe.

However, it is interesting that the PIGS countries (Portugal, Ireland/Italy, Greece and Spain) whose economies suffered the most during the recent recession have some of the lowest suicides rates in Europe - a finding which would seem to dismiss the easy link which some might make between financial hardship and suicide rates.

And so to the final chart....and the reason why I believe it is the most important. It compares the annual number of road fatalities with deaths by suicide over the past half-century.
As the chart shows, the number of people killed on Irish roads outnumbered the annual number of deaths by suicide until 1997 when the positions were reversed and have remained so ever since. The dramatic reduction in the past 20 years in road fatalities is a result of direct intervention by successive governments through a number of initiatives including a reduction in blood-alcohol driving limits, random breath testing of motorists and a penalty points system.

It shows what can be achieved by policies driven by political will to tackle a problem. One hopes the same can be done with suicide. The time for waiting is over.

Anyone affected by suicide or suicidal thoughts can contact the Samaritans on their new freephone number 116123, Console on 1800 247247, or Pieta House on 01 6010000.

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Monday, September 15, 2014

Ireland's Property Market - The story so far in 2014 and what estate agents don't tell us

September is a good month for analysing Ireland's property market for the first half of 2014.

As ever, there have been a few industry reports, such as one by myhome.ie, which understandably focuses on the upbeat news that the number of transactions and their value are up on the corresponding period in 2013. On its website, myhome.ie provides fine detail on how asking prices are up pretty much everywhere in the Republic.

Given such fine detail, it is surprising (or not really) that such surveys rarely focus on "average" prices actually fetched when properties were sold, especially in 2014 when it seems the green shoots of a new bubble (excuse the mixed metaphor) seem set to grab the nation again.

Why not? Because the figures are nowhere near as positive as the sector would like us to believe?  Surely not.

All the following figures and graphs are derived from the Residential Property Price Register which records all residential sales in the Republic.

I've excluded all non-full price transactions from the records which can sometimes comprise about 5% of all sales. However, their exclusion should not distort the picture either nationally or at county level to any extent and helps to provide a more accurate figure in relation to property prices. For the same reason, I've added 13.5% to all the prices recorded in the Register for new homes as they are exclusive of VAT. The inclusion of the VAT element provide a better reflection of the true cost of property to buyers.

The RPPR while limited in lots of respects provides us with three of the most important pieces of information about the market -  the number of properties sold in any period, their value and "average" prices. The best measure of what most people label "average" prices is the median price - the figure which provides the mid-value of all prices within a specific range.   It provides a truer picture of what most people are paying for property as it eliminates the distorting effect that a particularly expensive or cheap property would have on the calculation of the traditional average - i.e total value of all properties/ total count of all properties.

First of all - how much business is being transacted?

So far so good. We can see that the number of property sales in the first 6 months of each year has gone from a low of 7,165 in 2011 to to 15,190 in 2014 - the highest level in five years. The situation with the value of properties sold is similar as evident in the graph below whose curve mirrors that of the number of sales above
However, the next graph is one which is rarely shown in research carried out by estate agencies....the median price of homes. This graph shows that the average price of homes has not moved in tandem with the general pick-up in activity in the market which became evident in 2012. Instead it has taken until this year for a slight increase in average prices to become discernible with the national median price now up to €149,750 from €140,000 last year
The picture is even less rosy if you strip away the effect of the surge in prices for property in Dublin which has been created by a scarcity of supply. Now we see that average prices for all parts of the country excluding Dublin have fallen steadily from almost €196,000 in 2010 to €115,000 last year.....and the bad/good news is that the trend is still downward although slowing - with prices down another €2,000 to €113,000 in 2014.
To get a breakdown of the picture around the country, you can check out the interactive graph below to see average prices in each of the 26 counties. The graph shows the trend in the counties containing Ireland's five largest cities but you can add more. As the graph shows, Dublin is really the only major urban centre to be recording real growth in house prices. As for whether it's another bubble......
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