ECONOMICS 399 RESEARCH REPORT

An in-depth econometrics study on the effects of education

and the related stress of performance on the suicide rate in
South Korea

Timothy Lau 1444107

Economics 399 B1
Timothy Lau 1444107 The effect of education on suicide rates in South Korea
Econ 399 B1 Research Report

INTRODUCTION

Suicide – the act of intentionally causing one’s own death – is a very complex issue in which the
characteristics and reasons for such behavior is widespread and varied between demographic
groups. Whereas most developed countries have seen a decline in suicide rates, the suicide rate in
South Korea has actually risen. It has been ranked one of the highest in the world, ranking second
in terms of suicide per capita1 for most of the past decade. While suicide is nothing new, these
increasing figures point to a societal problem Korea has. Factors of such actions are usually
attributed to mental illnesses, though it can be influenced by stress related aspects such as financial
difficulties as well. For Korea, a major stress related factor for youth is academia. In this research
report, we explore how educational performance affects the suicide rate in South Korea. Is
education causing Korean children to take their lives?

In order to discuss the components of this statistic, we must first examine its foundations. In the
past century, South Korea has transformed its educational state in which “5% of its population
received a high school education to its current state of where 97% of all children graduate from
high school” (Hunt, 2015), in which 64% its 25-34 age population have university degrees (ICEF
Monitor, 2014)2. While its educational metamorphosis has been hailed as a miracle and considered
as one of the biggest factors that brought about Korea’s status as a significant economic force, it
does not come without cost. The CSAT (College Scholastic Ability Test, also known as the
suneung) is a type of standardized test in South Korea that students invest most of their youth into
studying for; it is believed to be a “do or die” exam, in which poor performance is often able to
break one’s future. In order to prepare for this exam, students in middle and high school spend
inordinate amounts of time – averaging 13 hours and up to 16 hours (World Education News and
Reviews, 2013) – in schools and libraries studying. In terms of days of the year spent in class,
compared to students in America, which spend 180, Korean students spend 220 – approximately
22% more than American youths. Along with the mounting competition between their peers, the

1
Suicide is often measured in terms of “number of people who have died from suicide out of a 100,000 persons
sample”
2
ICEF Monitor (2014)

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Timothy Lau 1444107 The effect of education on suicide rates in South Korea
Econ 399 B1 Research Report

pressure placed on students to be the best by their family, teachers, and Korean society in general,
is immense.

Literature Review

Due to the high – and increasing – figures of suicide amongst Korean youths, this topic has been
addressed heavily. According to Statistics Korea, stress over career and academic performance
plays a dominant role in why youths aged 13-19 (cited by IGEF monitor, 2014), and suicide has
become the primary cause of death for those aged 15-24 (Statistics Korea (MGE) cited by IGEF
monitor, 2014). In 2012, a study done by the National Youth Policy Institute found that 1 in 4
students consider killing themselves (Sistek, 2013, cited by Hunt, 2015). High school students
with suicidal tendencies often report the most powerful stress factors to be academically related –
for example, poor academic performance, amount of related work, and lack of rest (Im & Jung,
2005, cited by Lee et al., 2010). Low performance also plays a role in depression in this age group
(Park, 2009, cited by Lee et al., 2010). Most importantly, in relation to the CSAT, it has been
reported that “receiving results on the university entrance examination was a major trigger to
suicide attempts” (Kim & Chun, 2000, cited by Lee et al., 2010). Suicide rates substantially rise
when CSAT results are released (Janda, 2013, cited by Hunt, 2015). As Hunt so aptly states, “In
many respects, Korea has created a system of education geared towards preparing students for the
exam. This is the only life many students ever know—hence, failing the test by receiving a less
that [sic] satisfactory grade may in some senses be synonymous with failing life.” (Hunt, 2015).
In relation to academic stress, as mentioned, satisfaction in school is also a factor. A study in 2007
found that negative relationships with other peers and teachers increased suicidal tendencies (Huh,
2007, cited by Lee et al., 2010). Note that several studies have found that there are several factors
such as secure attachment with parents (Moon, 2006, cited by Lee et al., 2010) and positive
relationships with teachers (Kim, Kim, and Park, 2007, cited by Lee et al., 2010) are able to
mitigate academic related suicidal impulses.

While school as a stress related factor is a major – and may even be the largest – component to
why youths in Korea have suicidal ideations, it is important to mention that this is not the only

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Timothy Lau 1444107 The effect of education on suicide rates in South Korea
Econ 399 B1 Research Report

factor; for example, parent-child relationships, peer relationships, substance use, and even Internet
addiction are noted to be influential on their suicidal tendencies (Lee et al., 2010).

Data Description

This data comes from a variety of sources; the suicide rate, the dependent variable, is taken from
the OCED health statistics. This suicide rate is an age standardized rate in which it is measured in
terms of number of suicided persons in 100000 persons. For the purpose of this regression, this
statistic is the best I could find; any data pertaining to suicide rates of adolescents were annually
inconsistent. Although this statistic is age standardized, it represents the suicide rate of the entire
populous of South Korea and therefore should have many other factors affecting it. It should also
be noted that the suicide rates may not be completely accurate due to the stigma of mental illnesses
in South Korea; because mental illness is often looked down upon in their society, suicides are
sometimes not reported. The 2016 suicide rate had not been reported yet, and I did not replace the
missing value with the sample mean because the sample mean deviated from the seeming trend
that the existing data already had.

The rest of the data, which are the regressors, come from Statistics Korea and the Brief Statistics
on Korean Education posted on the Korean Educational Statistical Service. The regressors are
statistics pertaining to high school students and tertiary students – university, graduate, and trade
school students – are of a variety of categories: enrollment rates, advancement rates,
discontinuation rates and ratio of female to male. I would have included the CSAT test scores but
the data for the scores were hard to access; not only were they in Korean, online translating tools
translated the document poorly. In addition, the Korean Ministry of Education decided not to
record test score averages after 2002 and instead recorded data based on the many sections of the
test.

Because this is a time series study, I selected the sample based on the consistency and the
frequency of the data; for example, a lot of data from Statistics Korea was scattered data – there
was data for one specific year – and others were statistics taken in intervals – which would have
been made the data consistent with the consequence of a small sample size. I took annual data for

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Timothy Lau 1444107 The effect of education on suicide rates in South Korea
Econ 399 B1 Research Report

as far back as I could find. The final sample size is 11 for which I have nearly complete data for
11 years. A lin-lin relationship regression will be used to test the hypothesis. Because the data has
such a small sample size and a high chance of being inaccurate, a 10% significance level will be
used instead of the standard 5%.

Findings

The results of the regression of high school enrollment rate, tertiary enrollment rate, high school
to tertiary advancement rate, discontinuation rate of tertiary students, and female ratio to
population on the suicide rate in Korea (see Table 1) was very promising. The R^2 is extremely
high, meaning that most of the variance is explained by the model.
 The constant was -179.411 with a p value of 0.030; if all of the independent variables were
zero, the suicide rate would be negative; this is impossible because the suicide rate cannot
fall below 0.
 The enrollment rate of high school was 2.24 with a p value if 0.035; for every 1% increase
in high school enrollment rate, there is approximately a 2.2 statistically significant increase
in the suicide rate per 100000 persons.
 The enrollment rate of tertiary education coefficient is 1.09 with a p value of 0.023; for
every 1% increase in tertiary education enrollment, there is a 1.1 statistically significant
increase in the suicide rate.
o The enrollment rate of tertiary education and enrollment rate of high school has
positive effects on the suicide rate. It can be argued that, as you increase the
population of the school, it is more likely that there is a probable increase in
students who have suicidal tendencies. However, given Korea’s population, a 3
suicides per 100000 persons increase given a 1% increase of enrollment rate in each
category is economically significant, and the case that their education has a large
effect on their suicide rate can be made.
 The advancement rate from high school to tertiary education had a coefficient of 0.784
with a p value of 0.030, meaning that for every 1% increase in advancement rate, there was
a 0.78 statistically significant increase in suicide rate per 100000 persons. This is not
expected; it is expected that a lower advancement rate would increase suicidal tendencies.

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Timothy Lau 1444107 The effect of education on suicide rates in South Korea
Econ 399 B1 Research Report

However, one could argue that the stress of entering tertiary education could increase the
suicide rate.
 The discontinuation rate of tertiary students coefficient was -3.01 with a p value of 0.209,
meaning that for every 1% increase in discontinuation rate, there is nearly a -3 statistically
insignificant yet economically significant decrease in suicides per 100000 persons. This is
very interesting, since discontinuing school in Korea is heavily looked down upon. From
this observation alone, it can be argued that discontinuing school relieves a large amount
of stress and therefore will decrease the suicide rate significantly. Ergo, the education in
Korea has a large effect on its suicide rate. However, because it is statistically insignificant,
we cannot reject the null hypothesis that the discontinuation rate has no effect on the suicide
rate.
 The female ratio to population coefficient is -2.81 with a p value of 0.038, meaning that a
1% increase in the female ratio would decrease the suicide rate by 2.8. This means that
females are less likely to commit suicide than males.

The plotted values form a line similar to a 45 degree line. The y-axis is the observed values while
the x-axis is the predicted data. This means that the model seems to be doing a pretty good job at
predicting suicide rate.

When performing the estat ovtest on STATA to test for omitted variable bias (OVB)(refer to Figure
1), the p value generated by the test was 0.7636 meaning that we cannot reject the null hypothesis
that there is no OVB and we can conclude that we do not need anymore variables. However,
because this model has such a small sample size, it is very easy for the model to be fitted and
therefore the results of this test should be taken with a grain of salt. Intuition says that the age
standardized suicide rate should be affect by many other aspects, such as unemployment rate or
mental illnesses.

To check for heteroscedasticity, I performed a correlation table between the dependent variables
and the residual errors (refer to Table 3). They were correlated so the presence of heteroscedasticity
is possible. I then performed a Breusch-Pagan Test (refer to Table 4). The coefficients of the
dependent variables were not 0, but they were statistically insignificant. The coefficients were

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Timothy Lau 1444107 The effect of education on suicide rates in South Korea
Econ 399 B1 Research Report

economically insignificant; therefore we can say that the presence of heteroscedasticity is

negligible. However, this may be due to the small sample size. In order to get rid of any possible
heteroscedasticity, I regressed the model with robust standard errors (refer to Table 4). The results
of this regression was that all the standard errors were smaller and all the regressors became
statistically significant.

When using the STATA command vif to check for multicollinearity (refer to Table 5), none of the
results were above 10. This means that we do not have to worry about multicollinearity.

In order to see if the error in the current period had any correlation to the error in the future, I
predicted the residual errors and created a lag term in which error lagged by a year. The resulting
error (refer to Table 6) had a coefficient of 0.06 with a p value of 0.94; this is statistically
insignificant and we have not violated our assumption that the errors are not correlated with each
other.

It would be inappropriate to use the Chow test to test for the difference in suicide rates before and
after the 2008 financial crisis due to the lack of sample size.

Conclusion

In summary, the enrollment rate for both high school and tertiary education has a large positive
effect while the discontinuation rate has a large negative effect; from these factors alone, it can
be said that there is a large correlation between being in school in South Korea and suicidal
ideation. It is important to note that males are more likely to fall victim to these ideations than
females.

Even though the models in this paper had very significant results, the models themselves suffer
from a small sample size. It is easier to fit the variables to the data the smaller the sample size
and therefore the predicted values may not be very accurate. There are many other factors to the
high suicide rate in South Korea. However, from these models alone, we can conclude that
education in South Korea plays a major role in its suicide rates.

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Timothy Lau 1444107 The effect of education on suicide rates in South Korea
Econ 399 B1 Research Report

Tables and Figures

Source SS df MS Number of obs 11

F(5, 5) 7.96
Model 65.30563 5 13.06113 Prob > F 0.0199
Residual 8.199817 5 1.639963 R-squared 0.8884
Adj R-squared 0.7769
Total 73.50544 10 7.350544 Root MSE 1.2806

Suicide Rate Coef. Std. Err. t P>t [95% Conf Interval]

Enrollment
rate for high
school 2.238608 0.778104 2.88 0.035 0.238428 4.238788
Enrollment
rate for tertiary
education 1.088663 0.335051 3.25 0.023 0.227387 1.949939
Advancement
rate from high
school to
tertiary school 0.783634 0.26034 3.01 0.03 0.114409 1.45286
Discontinuation
rate for tertiary
school -3.01131 2.090331 -1.44 0.209 -8.38468 2.362056
Female ratio to
population -2.81337 1.006182 -2.8 0.038 -5.39984 -0.2269
_cons -179.411 59.81359 -3 0.03 -333.167 -25.6553
Table 1. Stata output of the regression of high school enrollment rate, tertiary enrollment rate, high
school to tertiary advancement rate, discontinuation rate of tertiary students, and female ratio to
population on suicide rate in Korea.
34
32
30
28
26

26 28 30 32 34
Fitted values

Figure 1. Plotted values of suicide rate on its predicted fitted values.

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Timothy Lau 1444107 The effect of education on suicide rates in South Korea
Econ 399 B1 Research Report

Ramsey RESET test using the powers of fitted values of

suiciderates
Ho: model has no omitted variables
F(3, 2) = 0.41
Prob > F = 0.7636
Figure 2. The Ramsey Reset test for the model; null hypothesis = model has no omitted variables.

Number of obs
Source SS df MS = 11
F(5, 5) = 0.39
Model 1.84488 5 0.368976 Prob > F = 0.8349
Residual 4.67866 5 0.935732 R-squared = 0.2828
Adj R-squared
= -0.4344
Total 6.52354 10 0.652354 Root MSE = 0.96733

[95% Conf
Residual errors Coef. Std. Err. t P>t Interval]

Enrollment
rate for high
school -0.17329 0.587755 -0.29 0.78 -1.68416 1.337585
Enrollment
rate for tertiary
education -0.17239 0.253087 -0.68 0.526 -0.82297 0.47819
Advancement
rate from high
school to
tertiary school -0.02776 0.196653 -0.14 0.893 -0.53328 0.477749
Discontinuation
rate for tertiary
school -1.0825 1.57897 -0.69 0.523 -5.14137 2.976372
Female ratio to
population 0.316085 0.760038 0.42 0.695 -1.63766 2.269825
_cons 21.94305 45.18128 0.49 0.648 -94.1991 138.0852
Table 2. The regression of the dependent variables on the residual errors.

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Timothy Lau 1444107 The effect of education on suicide rates in South Korea
Econ 399 B1 Research Report

Advanceme
Enrollme nt rate
Enrollme nt rate from high Discontinuati Female
Residu nt rate for school to on rate for ratio to
al for high tertiary tertiary tertiary populati
Errors school education school school on
Residual
Errors 1
Enrollment
rate for high
school 0.2536 1
Enrollment
rate for
tertiary
education -0.239 -0.0156 1
Advancement
rate from
high school to
tertiary
school -0.1963 -0.5474 0.3576 1
Discontinuati
on rate for
tertiary
school -0.4044 -0.3227 -0.0745 -0.0786 1
Female ratio
to population 0.2631 0.8578 0.3117 -0.3687 -0.4583 1
Table 3. The correlation table between the errors and the dependent variables.

Linear
regression Number of obs = 11
F(5, 5) = 11.63
Prob > F = 0.0088
R-squared = 0.8884
Root MSE = 1.2806

Robust Std. [95% ConfInterval]

Suicide Rate Coef. Err. t P>t

Enrollment
rate in high
school 2.238608 0.605515 3.7 0.014 0.682083 3.795133
Enrollment
rate in tertiary
ed 1.088663 0.247303 4.4 0.007 0.452951 1.724375

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Timothy Lau 1444107 The effect of education on suicide rates in South Korea
Econ 399 B1 Research Report

Advancement
rate from high
to tertiary 0.783634 0.230444 3.4 0.019 0.191259 1.37601
Discontinuation
rate from
tertiary
education -3.01131 1.113427 -2.7 0.043 -5.87347 -0.14915
Female ratio to
population -2.81337 0.757685 -3.71 0.014 -4.76106 -0.86568
_cons -179.411 54.42338 -3.3 0.022 -319.311 -39.5113
Table 4. Robust regression

Variable VIF 1/VIF

Female ratio to
population 7.93 0.126069
Enrollment
rate in high
school 6.25 0.160002
Enrollment
rate in tertiary
ed 2.16 0.463929
Advancement
rate from high
to tertiary 2 0.499307
Discontinuation
rate from
tertiary
education 1.57 0.63712

Mean VIF 3.98

Table 5. Variance inflation factor. Any result above 10 is trouble worth noting.

[95%
error Coef. Std. Err. t P>t Conf. Interval]

-
Error lag 0.059629 0.747007 0.08 0.941 2.31768 2.436939
Table 6. Partial regression output (taken from regressing errorlag and all of the other dependent
variables on error).

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Timothy Lau 1444107 The effect of education on suicide rates in South Korea
Econ 399 B1 Research Report

*estimating regression
reg suiciderate enrollratehigh enrollrateter advratehtt discontrateter femalerateter
*testing for ovb
estat ovtest
*testing for heteroskedasticity
predict uhat, residual
gen uhat2 = uhat*uhat
reg uhat2 enrollratehigh enrollrateter advratehtt discontrateter femalerateter
corr uhat2 enrollratehigh enrollrateter advratehtt discontrateter femalerateter
reg suiciderate enrollratehigh enrollrateter advratehtt discontrateter femalerateter, robust
*how well the model predicts the data
predict suiciderate_p
scatter suiciderate suiciderate_p
*multicollinearity
quietly reg suiciderate enrollratehigh enrollrateter advratehtt discontrateter femalerateter
vif
*see if error in the present has any effect on error in the future
predict error, residuals
gen errorlag = error[_n-1]
reg error errorlag enrollratehigh enrollrateter advratehtt discontrateter femalerateter

Figure 3. The STATA commands used in this paper

References

- Lee, S. Y., Hong, S. J., & Espelage, D. L. (2010). An ecological understanding of youth
suicide in South Korea. School Psychology International, 31(5), 531-546.
DOI: 10.1177/0143034310382724
- "High performance, high pressure in South Korea's education system." ICEF Monitor -
Market intelligence for international student recruitment. N.p., 27 Mar. 2015. Web. 10
Apr. 2017.
- Hunt, Josiah. "Rising Rates of Suicide Among School Age Children in South
Korea." Catalyst 2408-137X 11.1 (2015): 46-50. University of Alberta Library. Web. 26
Mar. 2017.
- OECD (2017), Suicide rates (indicator). doi: 10.1787/a82f3459-en (Accessed on 05 April
2017)
- Brief Statistics on Korean Education. Seoul: Department of Education, 2016. Korean
Educational Statistical Service. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.
- Brief Statistics on Korean Education. Seoul: Department of Education, 2012. Korean
Educational Statistical Service. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.
- Brief Statistics on Korean Education. Seoul: Department of Education, 2009. Korean
Educational Statistical Service. Web. 30 Mar. 2017.

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