Why are the French so prone to suicide? IT IS the country that invented the 35-hour working week, prides itself on its joie de vivre and whose president extols the merits of measuring happiness, not just national income. That makes the string of 24 suicides at France Telecom all the more chilling (see article). Yet what is perhaps most striking is that the suicide rate at the company is about average for France. The French suicide rate is 14.6 per 100,000 people, according to the OECD. Men are particularly prone: 22.8, against 7.5 for women. This puts the suicides over 20 months at France Telecom, which employs just over 100,000 people, in line with the national average. More people take their lives as a share of the population than anywhere in western Europe bar Finland and Belgium. The French suicide rate is over twice that in Britain and 40% higher than in Germany and America.
IT IS the country that invented the 35-hour working week, prides itself on its joie de vivre and whose president extols the merits of measuring happiness, not just national income. That makes the string of 24 suicides at France Telecom all the more chilling (see article). Yet what is perhaps most striking is that the suicide rate at the company is about average for France.
The French suicide rate is 14.6 per 100,000 people, according to the OECD. Men are particularly prone: 22.8, against 7.5 for women. This puts the suicides over 20 months at France Telecom, which employs just over 100,000 people, in line with the national average. More people take their lives as a share of the population than anywhere in western Europe bar Finland and Belgium. The French suicide rate is over twice that in Britain and 40% higher than in Germany and America.
And as this is the Economist, their explanation for this is ... (who is surprised?) ... rigid labor markets!
How to explain this existential angst? France offers its citizens unusual comforts, with first-rate health care, long holidays and sit-down lunches, protected jobs and generous welfare. But the veneer of security masks much uncertainty. Job-protection rules discourage permanent job creation, so the young drift on temporary contracts. Unable to shed staff, firms give employees meaningless jobs instead, to try to nudge them out. And big French firms, many one-time branches of the civil service, have been opened up to market competition, bringing new pressures to perform in the office or factory floor.
