

Working at FoxConn appears to lower suicide risk - frankus
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/media-gets-its-facts-wrong-working-at-foxconn-significantly-cuts-suicide-risk/1356

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ugh
As far as I know the number of suicides doesn’t include workers who decided to
kill themselves at home, not at the plant.

Even though the numbers certainly don’t seem extraordinary if you put them in
context. It would be a interesting social science research project to figure
out how to get comparable data and which comparisons are useful.

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dlytle
From what I read, the plant is practically a self-contained city; most of the
workers actually live at the plant.

Obviously that's something that's really hard to adjust for, living at your
place of work, but the best start would be to identify if all the people who
committed suicide at the plant, also lived at the plant

(I may be grossly incorrect here; I'm about to doze off, and my memory sucks
most of the time anyway. If I'm wrong, my apologies.)

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tokenadult
Moreover, the recent suicides at FoxConn simply reflect that suicide risk is
highest in the Northern Hemisphere in the month of May.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4528883.stm>

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tel
Might there be some confounding factors. Perhaps having a stable job at a
factory, even if it's FoxConn, is better morale than being a perpetually
marginalized migrant worker that's tossed from abusive employer to abusive
employer since you left your family in the countryside to find your fortune,
despite lacking credentials, in beautiful Shanghai?

Actually the few I met seemed surprisingly chipper. That must not be it.

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brudgers
Here's the original blog at the People's Daily Online:
<http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90780/91345/6994665.html>

And yes, that's the official news paper of the Chinese Communist Party by way
of ZDnet. Not that there's anything wrong with that...iPhone white compliments
my Little Red Book.

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rayval
Fake Steve has good insight.

[http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/05/our-new-spin-on-the-
foxconn...](http://www.fakesteve.net/2010/05/our-new-spin-on-the-foxconn-
suicide-epidemic.html)

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RyanMcGreal
>Working at Foxconn dramatically reduces people’s risk of suicide!

Obligatory: <http://xkcd.com/552/>

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shareme
only one problem..

China suicide rate per 100,000 people base don 100,000 people that are not
transient..

That 400,00 foxcon employee number changes monthly..ie its not the same
400,000 people and thus you cannot statistically compare the stats to one
another

