This paper describes marked changes in the age patterns of male and female suicide rates in New Zealand and Australia over the last 50 years. In both countries in the 1950s and 1960s, suicide rates of male youths were low, but progressively increased across the age-range to reach a peak in old age. Between the 1960s and 1990s, suicide rates of New Zealand males in their late teens and early twenties increased three-fold. There was a comparable but smaller increase in suicide rates of young Australian males. Since the late 1990s, the suicide rates of young males have fallen in both countries. However, New Zealand youth suicide rates (Māori much more than non-Māori) in 2009–2013 were double those in Australia. Since the 1980s, similar and substantial falls in late-life suicide rates of males and females have occurred in both countries. Notably, the Māori suicide rate is almost zero in old age.
