Older-age suicide amid changing family structures in South Korea: a demographic analysis using administrative data

Introduction: The mean age at death from suicide has increased globally from 1990 to 2021. South Korea, a high-income country marked by one of the highest suicide rates in the world, shows high age-specific suicide rates among its older population. Less attention has been paid to the sociodemographic patterns of older-age suicide and their cohort changes, in light of its rapidly changing family support system and educational expansion in recent decades. Methods: We used South Korean death registries and census data to calculate older-age suicide rates by sex, marital status and education, for the 1930s, '40s and '50s birth cohorts. We then projected the number of deaths by suicide among the never-married population by sex and education between the ages of 60 years and 69 years, for those born in 1961-1965 to 1981-1985, assuming that subgroup suicide rates remain constant or decrease by 5%, 15% or 30%. Results: Older-age suicide rates declined among divorced or single individuals over the last two decades, but only among more highly educated individuals. High suicide rates remained concentrated among never-married or divorced and less-educated men. Our projections show the impact of changing demographics, namely South Korea's shift from a high-marriage, less-educated to a low-marriage, highly-educated society, on potentially shifting volumes of deaths by suicide. We project that the magnitude of suicide deaths among tertiary-educated, never-married men at older ages will likely eclipse their less-educated counterparts. Conclusions: With the continued trend of educational expansion and retreat from marriage, the demographic of older-age suicide is expected to shift upward educationally. Whether this pattern is realised depends at least partly on the changing norms around family formations and policy intervention. This deterministic approach of this study outlines a baseline assumption given the current population structure and observed educational and marital trends in South Korea.