US suicide deaths by race, 1999 to 2020
US suicide deaths by race stood at 16 in 2020, down 4.3% on the previous period.
The rate of deaths ruled suicide in the United States, per 100,000 population, compared across racial groups. The latest readings (2020): White at 15.7, American Indian or Alaska Native at 14.6, Black or African American at 7.5, Asian or Pacific Islander at 7.
How it is measured
Every point is built from death certificates: each US death is certified, assigned an underlying cause under the ICD-10 coding standard, and compiled in CDC WONDER. Rates divide deaths by group population, so groups of different sizes are directly comparable, and small counts are suppressed by CDC privacy rules rather than shown imprecisely. The modern coding standard begins in 1999, which is where this series starts, keeping every year internally comparable.
What the curve shows
Suicide's slow rise across most of this window is one of the defining US public-health trends of the era, and the male-female gap is among the largest in any mortality category. Rates, not counts, make the group comparison honest; the remaining gaps and their direction of travel are the substance of the chart.
What does per 100,000 mean?
How is the cause of death decided?
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