The number of elderly Japanese committing suicide jumped to a record high nine percent last year because of mounting health and economic worries among seniors in a rapidly aging society, the government said Thursday.

The deaths of elderly people helped push the country's overall number of suicides to 33,093 in 2007, a 2.9 percent increase and the second-highest annual tally on record, the National Police Agency said in a yearly report.

Japanese aged 60 and over were the fastest growing age group among suicide cases, jumping by 987 last year to 12,107 deaths, an increase of 8.9 percent from 2006. The age group made up 36.6 percent of all suicides in Japan in 2007.

Health trouble was listed as the reason in 56 percent of the elderly deaths last year and economic worries were second, figuring in 15 percent of cases, the study said.

"For those aged above 60, economic and health reasons were closely linked. The figure underlined the fact that many old people were financially struggling, which could easily cause poor health," Masahiro Yamada, a sociology professor at Chuo University in Tokyo.

The number of Japanese aged 65 or older hit a record high of more than 27 million in 2007, or 21.5 percent of the population, the government reported in May. Those 75 or older accounted for nearly 10 percent.

Japan is now in the grip of a new wave of suicides from mixing commonly available chemicals to form deadly hydrogen sulfide gas. Police said 517 people have killed themselves so far this year by inhaling such fumes, the latest in a series of suicides fads in Japan. That far surpasses the 29 hydrogen suicides last year.

(Agencies via Xinhua June 23, 2008)