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An Analysis of Suicides in Japan, 1997–2007: Changes in Incidence, Persistence, and Age Profiles

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Abstract

This study investigates the abrupt increase in the number of suicides in Japan in 1998 and the subsequent persistence of suicide thereafter; it does so by undertaking data decompositions in terms of demographic factors, reasons for suicide, employment status, and access to the means of committing suicide. The decomposition results regarding the growth in the Japanese suicide rate from 1997 to 1998 show that a large proportion of the abrupt increase in the number of suicides can be attributed to middle-aged men with financial problems, and that the self-employed subset of the population contributed significantly to growth in the suicide rate. Meanwhile, persistently high suicide rates since 1998 can be largely attributed to the younger generation (i.e., those aged 20–39). In accordance with the decomposition results, prefecture-level panel data regression established a correlation between suicide and economic hardship. In particular, the unemployment rate and the individual bankruptcy rate were found to be positively associated with the suicide rates of all males, males aged 20–39, and males aged 40–59, while individual bankruptcy was found to affect middle-aged males more than younger males.

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Notes

  1. Japan National Police Agency (NPA), Annual Report on Suicide, (2009).

  2. See Mann et al. (2005) as an example.

  3. There are on average four factors involved out of the following 10 common suicide risk factors: business slump, changes in work environment, overwork, physical illness, deterioration in job place worker relationship, unemployment and failure in job seeking, over-indebtedness and multiple debt problem, problem in intra-household human relationship or relationship with his/her spouse, livelihood difficulties, and depression (mental illness).

  4. For a survey of the literature on suicide and socioeconomic variables, see Chen et al. (2012).

  5. MHLW data are published in the Vital Statistics, while NPA data are published in the Annual Report on Suicide.

  6. In general, NPA data report slightly higher suicide numbers than MHLW data.

  7. There are limitations in examining NPA suicide data in terms of the reasons for committing suicide. First, since 2007, the NPA has been recording multiple reasons for each suicide, which makes it impossible to decompose into individual categories suicide data in terms of those reasons. Second, from 1999 to 2006, the reasons for committing suicide were not identified for those individuals who did not leave wills. As a result, the sample from each year is reduced to only one-third of the total suicides in this period, perhaps incurring sample-selection problems. Until and including 1998, the NPA suicide data covered almost all suicides in terms of reasons for committing suicide.

  8. For details on the decomposition formula, see Mori et al. (2012).

  9. Note that there were some discrepancies between the actual suicide growth rate, 35.16 %, and the sum of the degrees of contribution, 34.834 %, due to the approximation of derivatives by first differences. We report this discrepancy as a residual, at the bottom of each table.

  10. J = 2 (genders) × 4 (age groups) × 7 (reasons for committing suicide) = 56.

  11. Tables 1 and 2 use different age-group categorizations, due to categorization differences between the MHLW and NPA datasets. The data in Table 2 exclude suicides of unknown age or for unidentified reasons.

  12. The term “employment status” used throughout the paper is somewhat of a misnomer; we followed the categorizations offered by each of the data sources

  13. J = 6 (employment status) × 7 (reasons for committing suicide) = 42.

  14. According to the 10th Revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) from Japan’s Vital Statistics, these 25 categories correspond to Categories X60–X84.

  15. We follow the same categorization as that in Table 22 of the Vital Statistics Special Report (2004): Hanging, X70; gas poisoning, X67; drugs, X60–X66, X68, and X69; drowning, X71; jumping (others), X80; jumping (towards a moving object such as a train), X81; and others, X72–X79 and X82–X84.

  16. In Sect. 2.2.1, we used MHLW data from 1998 to 2007, while Sects. 2.2.2 and 2.2.3 use NPA data from 1999 to 2006. As mentioned, only the NPA data contains information on the number of suicides by reason and by employment status; due to changes in the NPA’s categorization system in 2007, we were limited to the use of data from 1999 to 2006

  17. One possible interpretation is that the unemployed include not only individuals who lost their jobs, but also individuals who were retired due to old age or for other reasons. Also, unemployed people may have already suffered from depressive illness at the same time they lost their jobs; hence, in this group, health becomes a dominant reason for suicide.

  18. See, for example, Hamermesh and Soss (1974). For a recent survey of the literature of unemployment and suicide, we refer the readers to Chen et al. (2012).

  19. See, for example, Conwell and Brent (1995).

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Acknowledgments

This paper is based on work carried out for the Japan Committee’s “Jisatsu Jittai Hakusho (White Paper on Suicide Reality) 2008” as a background paper. The authors are grateful to Mr. Yasuyuki Shimizu of LiFELINK for his constructive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Finance, National Chengchi University, 64, Sec. 2, ZhiNan Rd, Wenshan District, Taipei, 11605, Taiwan

    Joe Chen

  2. School of Economics, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-Ro, Seodaemun-Gu, Seoul, 120-749, Korea

    Yun Jeong Choi

  3. Department of Economics, Yale University, PO Box 208268, New Haven, CT, 06520-8268, USA

    Kota Mori

  4. Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

    Yasuyuki Sawada

  5. Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

    Saki Sugano

  6. Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan

    Saki Sugano

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  1. Joe Chen
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  2. Yun Jeong Choi
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  3. Kota Mori
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  4. Yasuyuki Sawada
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  5. Saki Sugano
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Correspondence to Yun Jeong Choi.

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Chen, J., Choi, Y.J., Mori, K. et al. An Analysis of Suicides in Japan, 1997–2007: Changes in Incidence, Persistence, and Age Profiles. Soc Indic Res 121, 253–272 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0635-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0635-5

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