Occupational class differences in male suicide risk in Finland from 1970 to 2019.

"Conflicts of interest : None declared."

"Funding S.R. received funding from the Finnish Cultural Association (SKR) (grant 00200906 Keskusrahasto). A.K. is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (grant ES/S00744X/1). A.K. and A.V. received funding for this research from the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland (grant 345218, LIFECON). Open access funded by Helsinki University Library. Conflicts of interest: None declared. Key pointsA comparison of occupational groups shows that the change in suicide mortality has not occurred simultaneously in different population groups.While suicide has more than halved in working-age men in Finland from the 1990s to 2010s, the decrease started for managers and professionals already decades before, and non-manual employees and manual workers only reached managers and professionals’ 1970s’ level of suicide risk in the 2000s.The study identifies three distinct time-periods of occupational class differences in male suicide risk in Finland: period of high risk and high occupational class differences (around 1970–96), period of equalization of suicide risk (around 1996–2003), and a period of overall lower suicide risk (2003–19).While the absolute rate of male suicide has decreased, a relative social gradient has persisted with manual employees still having an around 60–80% higher risk of suicide than managers and professionals."