Last Friday in West Palm Beach, Florida, a woman intentionally jumped from an overpass on Interstate 95. The woman was struck by a White van and killed. Apparently, when the van hit her, thousands of dollars fell out of her pockets and sprinkled the interstate, and what do you suppose passing drivers did? They stopped and grabbed up the money.

Would you have stopped to collect money from the scene of what must have been a gruesome accident?

Journalist Charles Duhigg wrote a piece back in October of 2003 titled, “The Economics of Suicide - Why trying to kill yourself may be a smart business decision”. I stumbled across the article while researching money and suicide. In the article, Mr. Duhigg references the attempted suicide of Kirk Jones, a Canadian who made world news in 2003 for jumping over the guardrail at Niagara Falls. Duhigg wrote of Jone’s daredevil leap:

When Kirk Jones jumped over the guardrail at Niagara Falls last week traditional explanations for his leap were plentiful….. But when it later came out that Jones had boasted to a friend, “If I go over and I live, I am going to make some money,” it was time to call in the economists.

Jones is now negotiating with tabloids to sell his story for thousands of dollars. His case, however, will complicate a debate that is roiling suicidology, one that pits economists against psychiatrists over a basic question: Is suicide a rational decision?

Here are some interesting snippets from the article which you can read in full on slate.com

…as personal incomes rise, the propensity for suicide falls

Attempting suicide can be a rational choice, but only if there is a high likelihood it will cause the attempter’s life to significantly improve.

After people attempt suicide and fail, their incomes increase by an average of 20.6 percent compared to peers who seriously contemplate suicide but never make an attempt.

“hard-suicide” attempts, in which luck is the only reason the attempts fail, are associated with a 36.3 percent increase in income.

Attempting suicide as a means for increasing your income is pretty risky as you have a better chance of succeeding at your suicide attempt than failing; but if you jumped off a high rise building and survived there’s a good chance someone will be willing to pay you money for your story, especially if you have intangible assets that would make you an unlikely candidate for a suicide attempt. People who have something going for them don’t usually try to commit suicide. If you have a degree from Harvard and try to jump off the Empire State Building in New York City your suicide attempt will be more newsworthy than if you only have a GED. If you look like Brad Pitt or his girlfriend Angelina Jolie it would be easier to sell your story because more people will be interested to find out why someone so attractive would want to commit suicide.

Attempted suicide as a means for making money might not be the wisest option for an ordinary person unless you can come up with a highly innovative way of trying to kill yourself; then maybe the media might be interested in buying your story not because you are worth much to them but because the way you tried to kill yourself makes for entertaining news. Overdosing on medication won’t even get you a mention in your local newspaper. Maybe you can set fire to yourself in a public place. That should bring reporters from CNN, MSNBC, FOX and all the major networks; but you’d probably have to spend some time in a psyche ward and maybe even in jail depending on the law in your local state.

On a serious note, suicide is nothing to make light of. Attempting suicide in the hope of turning the attempt, should it fail, into money is a type of fraud. Don’t do it.