Research conducted by a Syracuse University professor revealed that students who are born closer to school cutoff dates in Japan are more likely to commit suicide.

Michiko Ueda, a research assistant professor in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and Tetsuya Matsubayashi, an associate professor of the Osaka School of International Public Policy at Osaka University in Japan, examined the suicide mortality rate of children in Japan between 1989 to 2010 and compared it to children who were born right before and after the school entry cutoff date, April 2.

The results showed that students between 15 and 25 years old who were born closer to the cutoff date were 30 percent more likely to have died by suicide compared to those who were born after the cutoff date.

“It was very surprising,” Ueda said. “If you see the graph, there’s a huge discontinuity between those two groups.”

Ueda said the idea of studying the relationship between the school cutoff date and suicide rates originated from studies done in the past that indicated those who are younger in the class tend to be academically disadvantaged. This is connected with suicide in that one of the causes of suicide is academic failure or failure of getting accepted to the university, Ueda said.

Ueda added that the so-called “relative age effect” has a significant impact on physical appearance and child development.

“If you think about when you are in the first grade — those who were born in April and those who were born in late March — it’s one year difference at that age is a huge difference,” Ueda said.

The study took advantage of the unique educational system in Japan: the school entry cutoff date is April 2 across the board in the country. Children have to complete nine years of mandatory schooling regardless of their date of birth, and late entry to primary school is not allowed in Japan.

This allowed researchers to use a Regression Discontinuity (RD) model, which assumes that everything except school grade between those who were born before the cutoff date and after the cutoff date are the same. Using this method, researchers could exclude other factors and prove the validity of the study.

Matsubayashi said the results of the study could apply to all countries that have similar educational systems as Japan, such as South Korea.

Linwood Vereen, an associate professor and program coordinator for the clinical mental health counseling program in the School of Education, said even though there are cultural and educational differences between the U.S. and Japan, one needs to consider the significance of the age cutoff within the U.S.

“Parents have been making significant decisions to wait until their children are older and they are doing that for a set of specific, developmental reasons,” Vereen said. “And I think that in and of itself serves as a call for us to pay more attention to when our children are born, the developmental level of readiness and the network of support that is afforded to them.”

Vereen said the study could be extrapolated for helping health professionals, clinical and mental health counselors and even for administrators in K-12 settings and beyond in the U.S.

Published on October 19, 2015 at 9:45 pm

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