Examining trends in suicide rates by age, calendar year, and year of birth

  Background

It is important to remember that each suicide death data point represents a person with a family and community grieving for their loss. The reasons individuals take their own lives are often complex. However, we can work towards identifying groups of people who are at higher risk. This understanding can be used to improve the planning and targeting of suicide prevention efforts.

This release examines suicide deaths by age, calendar year, and year of birth. In doing so, it aims to understand how suicide rates vary across these factors and to identify groups at higher risk.

Examining trends in suicide rates by age, calendar year, and year of birth is important because:

• Risk of suicide death is not evenly distributed across all ages and identifying higher risk age groups may inform prevention activities.
  • For example, suicide rates increase as people age from early teenage years into their 20s.
• Any impacts of population wide prevention activities (for example, means restriction) or society wide events can be monitored through rates of deaths over time, regardless of age.
  • For example, the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and government responses caused major disruption to day to day lives of Australians. While there were initial concerns, suicide rates did not increase over this period.
• Individuals may experience different risks, based on their year of birth and understanding these differences can inform prevention activities.
  • For example, while there are some fluctuations, males born in the 1960s and 1970s generally have higher rates of death by suicide compared to those born in more recent decades.

Examining trends in deaths by age, calendar year, and year of birth is known as an Age – Period – Cohort analysis. The Age-Period-Cohort analysis presented in this release includes suicide deaths registered in Australia between 1964 and 2022, among people aged 10 to 79 years. Age effects are investigated using age in full years, 10 to 79. Period effects are investigated using calendar year, 1964 to 2022. Cohort effects are investigated using year of birth, 1885 to 2009. See Data sources for more information.

This publication updates and extends a study commissioned by the AIHW and completed by Henley and Harrison (2020). While producing similar results, there are some differences between Henley and Harrison's method and that implemented by the AIHW.

Suicide rates by age

Examining suicide rates by age (10 to 79 years) among those born each decade between the 1880s and the 2000s: 

• Regardless of birth decade, suicide rates increase as younger females and males move from childhood (ten years of age) into their mid-20s.
• After the mid-20s, the steepness of trends in suicide rates generally reduce as people continue to age. However, the direction (increase or decrease) and steepness of changes varies by sex and decade of birth.
  • As an example, suicide rates among females born in the 1940s, 1950s, and – to a lesser extent – the 1960s, largely plateaued after their mid-20s. However, for females born in the 1980s, there is a clear continuing increase in suicide rates until about the age of 39 years.
  • As another example, rates of suicide for males born in the 1940s, and – to a lesser extent – the 1950s, continued to rise to a peak between their late 30s and mid-40s. In contrast, for males born in the 1960s, suicide rates plateaued between their early 20s and 30s before declining.
• As some female birth cohorts aged past approximately 45 years, their suicide rates declined. This is particularly so for females born in the 1930s and earlier.

Suicide rates by calendar year

Examining suicide rates by calendar year (1964 to 2022) and age group:

• Across the whole timeseries (1964 to 2022), there is an overall downwards trajectory for female suicide rates among those aged 30 years and over. 
• Suicide rates among males aged in their 20s and 30s rise from the mid-1970s and peak in the late 1990s, before declining. 
• Suicide rates among males aged in their 60s and 70s decline, overall, across the timeseries. 
• From the beginning of the timeseries till about the mid-1970s, male suicide rates were higher among those aged in their 50s and 60s, compared to those in their 20s and 30s. However, between the early 1990s and mid-2000s the suicide rates for those aged in their 20s and 30s were higher than for those in their 50s and 60s. From the mid-2000s onwards, there are no clear differences in suicide rates across these age groups.

Suicide rates by year of birth

Examining suicide rates by year of birth (1885 to 2009) and age group:

• Female suicide rates decrease across those born from approximately the mid-1890s to 1940, for all age groups with data available. 
• Broadly, there is no clear trend in suicide rates for males born across the timeseries (1885 to 2009). However, a clear exception is observed for those in their 20s, where suicide rates increase from those born in approximately 1945 to a peak in 1971.

Methods used for suicide

Suicide deaths by hanging

• By calendar year, rates of suicide by hanging have increased since the 1980s and 1990s, (with some variation in timing across sex and age groups). This trend is most clearly observed among females and males younger than 60 years of age.
• There is an upwards trajectory for female and male hanging suicide rates among those born from about 1950 onwards (though with some variability in timing across age groups). 
• More specifically, for males aged between their 20s and 60s, there is an overall upwards trajectory in hanging suicide rates from approximately 1945 onwards and aged between their 20s and 60s (with some variation in timing across age groups). For age groups with available data, (those in their 20s, 30s, and 40s), these increases plateaued from about 1975 (though with some continuing fluctuations).

Suicide deaths by firearm

• Male firearm suicide rates peak around the age of 20 for those cohorts born from the 1950s to the 1980s. There is also clear reduction in the height of these peak rates for each successive birth cohort group from the 1960s through to the 1980s. (That is, the suicide rate among 20-year-olds born in the 1960s is higher than for 20-year-olds born in the 1970s. Further, the suicide rate among 20-year-olds born in the 1970s is higher than for those born in the 1980s.)
• There was a sharp decline in male firearm suicide rates staring in the 1980s and continuing till the end of the timeseries (2022). While already declining, the 1996 National Firearms Agreement, accompanying gun controls, buyback scheme, and subsequent agreements (Parliament of Australia 2025) may be associated with declining rates of firearm suicide.

Suicide deaths by poisons

• Declining overall suicide rates among females ageing past approximately 45 years, particularly for those born in or before the 1930s, are most clearly observed through the decreasing rates of poisoning suicide. 
• By calendar year, rates of female poisoning suicides decrease steeply, particularly during the first half of the timeseries. This decline may be associated with the initial scheduling of barbiturates in 1955 and the further tightening of restrictions in 1985 (Department of Health and Aged Care).
• The decreases in overall female suicide rates across those born between approximately the mid-1890s and 1940, is most clearly observed through declining rates of poisoning suicide.

Suicide deaths by gas

• By calendar year (1964 to 2022), male gas suicide rates declined steeply from the late 1990s onwards. 

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Supplementary tables

Generations – Suicide by age, period and year of birth – National Mortality Database

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