A Demographic Evaluation of Increasing Rates of Suicide Mortality in Japan and South Korea, 1985-2010

Rates of suicide mortality have declined substantially over the past 25 years in most OECD countries. Unfortunately, since 1985 suicide rates have increased by 20% in Japan and by 250% in South Korea. Suicide mortality has increased at an especially rapid pace in South Korea since 2000. To help disentangle the effects of age-related factors, secular change, and birth cohort membership, we estimated a series of intrinsic estimator age-period-cohort models of suicide mortality rates in Japan and South Korea between 1985 and 2010. Results indicate that age-related factors explain much of the increase in Japan, where a large segment of the population has moved into a high-risk age range of 40-65. In South Korea, the increase is driven by multiple factors – including rising period effects, a growing elderly population, and strong cohort effects for those born between the Great Depression and the aftermath of World War II.