Youth suicide rates will rise over the next two to four years, as a result of shockingly high youth unemployment rates, Progressive Wigram MP Jim Anderton is warning.

"High suicide rates follow high levels of youth unemployment, sure as night follows day.

"Youth unemployment today is near record levels and among the highest in the developed world.

"High rates of youth unemployment inevitably lead to high rates of suicide.

"In the nineties, four peak years of youth unemployment were followed by the highest youth suicide rates in the Western world.

"We are about to see a repeat. Our suicide rates are already at high levels, with over five hundred deaths a year. At the current level of youth unemployment, suicide will increase again in coming years"

He says the NZ Institute's snakes and ladders report shows New Zealand has the lowest median school leaving age in the OECD. Over a third of 16 year olds report being usually or always bored at school, and want to leave as soon as possible.

"Teenagers in New Zealand face high levels of unemployment, crime, and depression - materially worse on all these scores than the average of other developed countries.

"As the NZ Institute reported, 'Unemployment is central; it is an important consequence of disadvantage. Disengaged, inactive youth are at greater risk of lower earnings, needing social assistance, criminal offending, substance abuse, teenage births, suicide, homelessness and mental or physical ill health.

"The tragedy of youth unemployment is only the beginning The Government's choice to do nothing effective about youth unemployment has tragic consequences," Jim Anderton says.

ENDS

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