on the suicides happening at the plant that makes iPads...

[acroyear]

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Death by Foxconn - Cringely on technology:

What kind of sweat shop is Foxconn, anyway?

I don’t know and nether do you. What we do know is the annual suicide rate per 100,000 people in China is about 13.5, with slightly more women than men taking their own lives (the only major country where that is the case, by the way). That means the Foxconn factory, with 300,000 workers, ought to be experiencing almost 40 suicides per year, while the reported numbers are a lot less than that.

This story says more about the press than it does about Foxconn, because I’ve read about it for months and nobody else seems to have done the math, which isn’t hard to do. But doing the math makes the story weaker, so of course it isn’t mentioned.

I was asking this question just the other day - is it really that abnormal, when compared with the rest of the country, or is it only getting publicity because it has to do with Apple, and therefore needs to be a story even though it isn't?

BTW, the rate for Americans is 11.1.  China actually has more women then men commit suicide (14.8 vs 13.0), but in America its FAR more men (17.7 to 4.5).

Comments

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

My only problem is the assumption that the national suicide rate applies uniformly to all cross-sections of the population. I suspect that employment might make a difference.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

does it really make a difference? if being employed increases suicide due to stress, then it might bring the rate @ that factory in line with the national rate, but given the numbers, it wouldn't be much more.

if being unemployed increases suicide, then this factory's rate is even lower still. now, it could perhaps be compared to the suicide rate of the employed to see how it ranks, but i'm not sure it'll make that big a difference.

keep in mind, china has less unemployment than us (though like our numbers, that only accounts for those seeking work, and not the overall rate when including those who are not - hard to get those figures).

the real issue is the whole big numbers thing. we're simply not used to the idea of a single factory system even having 300,000 employees. While GM and Chevy may have had those numbers, they were not all concentrated in a campus, but spread out throughout the country, so the numbers wouldn't have been noticed.

again, we see "suicide" and think "bad", but the numbers show that it really is a non-issue in any instance.

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

Did you know that as global warming increased, the number of pirates have gone down? ;) Seriously, you can take any two data points and make correlations between them.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

And there is a huge correlation between ice cream consumption and homicide.