>"Abject suffering" is relative, too. What you might call "abject suffering," someone in another country might just call "Tuesday." Conversely, someone used to

>"Abject suffering" is relative, too. What you might call "abject suffering," someone in another country might just call "Tuesday." Conversely, someone used to living very well who ends up losing everything financially might feel extreme despair. Think 2008, or 1929. I don't agree that all suffering is relative. I don't believe that Pakistanis experience starvation less severely than Americans. Maybe human suffering is relative to being a human. I understand that you think relative poverty causes suicide. That's not important to my argument which (following from the original commenter's) is "there are other interesting variables that affect suicide besides relative poverty". You keep bringing up how culture is hard to control for. But a study of only South Korea doesn't control for culture. The correlation between relative poverty and suicide is probably higher in SK for cultural reasons (which is, of course, why SK was chosen). My point is that culture (among other things) is an interesting factor in suicide. It could be studied too. It's fine to look for the effect of relative poverty within a country but it's also interesting to look for other things, like culture and absolute poverty and levels of industrialization.