Why is the elderly suicide rate declining? The coverage expansion of major social security programs

The elderly suicide rate in South Korea has declined sharply over the past decade. This study inferred that the decrease in the elderly suicide rate is due to the achievement of expanding the coverage of major social security systems rather than demographic changes. Therefore, we analyzed whether the expansion of the service guarantee and income security system had an impact on the elderly suicide rate. The research method is a panel fixed-effects analysis with the dependent variable of the elderly suicide rate from 2011 to 2020 at the county level and the independent variables of the long-term care for the elderly, the national pension (old-age pension), and the basic pension. The results show that all but 12 of the nation's 228 cities and counties experienced a decrease in the elderly suicide rate, and that the expansion of the elderly long-term care coverage over the past decade has contributed significantly to the decrease in the elderly suicide rate. In the model with social security coverage, a one percentage point increase in long-term care coverage was associated with a 2.26 percentage point decrease in the suicide rate, and a one percentage point increase in old-age pension coverage was associated with a 1.35 percentage point decrease in the suicide rate. In the model that included the amount of benefits, the additional amount of old-age pension was statistically significant, with a 1.5 percentage point decrease in the suicide rate for every 100,000 won per capita increase. The results suggest that the challenge of responding to elderly suicides is to strengthen the security of the social security system rather than individual welfare programs in the city and county, and that the main way to do so is to expand the entitlement of the universal social insurance system.