The lower the level of education, the higher the suicide rate by up to 13 times...We need to recognize it as a social problem

Jan 08, 2025

A study found that the lower the level of education, the higher the suicide rate.

A team of professors (first author Hwang Min-ji, a researcher) of the Korea University School of Medicine's preventive medicine class recently revealed the results of a study on the hierarchical inequality of suicide.

Among young men aged 30 to 44, those who graduated from elementary school or lower showed 6.1 to 13 times higher suicide rates in all surveys (1995-2020) than those who graduated from university or higher, proving that socioeconomic gaps have a significant impact on suicide rates.

Specifically, the suicide rate per 100,000 people in the group of men aged 30 to 44 who graduated from elementary school or less is 288.2 in 2015 and 251.4 in 2020. This is about 10 times higher than the average suicide rate of 27.3 in Korea, more than twice the suicide rate of the Canadian Nunavut tribe, which is said to have the highest suicide rate in the world, and 232 suicide rate of the Guarani Kaiowa tribe in the Brazilian Amazon.

The study concluded that the suicide rate in Korea is high among those with a large gap between classes, especially among those with a low level of education.

The high suicide rate of men under elementary school graduation is reminiscent of the Nobel Prize-winner Angus Deaton's theory of 'Deat of Despair', and shows that the despair experienced in everyday life leads to suicide. This suggests that suicide is a result of reflecting the social gap and emotional transfer implied in differences between classes beyond simple individual problems.

In addition, Professor Ki Myung of Korea University Medical School emphasized that socioeconomic inequality is an important cause of mental pain and suicide beyond seeing suicide as an individual mental problem. Therefore, it is said that suicide should be recognized as a social problem rather than simply an individual mental problem. Social buffers must be accompanied so that socioeconomic disadvantages do not stigmatize failure and lead to strong mental suffering. Suicide prevention policies should deal with social crises such as poverty and lease fraud and mental health problems in an integrated manner. An approach that considers social vulnerability is needed, and through this, the gap in suicide can be narrowed and the overall social safety net can be strengthened.

Professor Ki Myung said, "Recently, Korea has been expanding psychological support such as the 'National Mind Investment Support Project', but administrative support related to social issues should be strengthened to prevent suicide", and "Active responses reflecting social vulnerability are the core of suicide prevention, and it is essential that this policy process reach the level of social respect and consideration from the standpoint of the socially underprivileged."

On the other hand, the results of this study were published in the renowned journal 'Social Science and Medicine' under the title Changes in Suicide Inequality during the Increasing and Decreasing Suicide Rate: Changes in the Context of an Increase and a Decrease in Suicide Mortality: The Case of South Korea, 1995-2020.