Social inequalities in life expectancy and mortality during the transition period of economic crisis (1993–2010) in Korea

International Journal for Equity in Health

Research

Mia Son¹  Ichiro Kawachi²  Juhwan Oh³  Junhyeok Yi⁴  Youngtae Cho⁵  Soonman Kwon⁵ 

[1] Department of Preventive Medicine, Medical College, Kangwon National University, Kangwon, South Korea;Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, 02115, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts, USA;Institute of Health Policy and Management, Medical Research Center, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea;Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, 02115, 677 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts, USA;Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, Daejeon, Korea;School of Public Health, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea;

关键词: Social inequalities;    Life expectancy;    Mortality;    Economic crisis;    Korea inequality in health;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-9276-11-71

 received in 2012-07-02, accepted in 2012-10-31,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundsThis study examines social inequalities in life expectancy and mortality during the transition period of the Korean economic crisis (1993–2010) among Korean adults aged 40 and over.MethodsData from the census and the national death file from the Statistics Korea are employed to calculate life expectancy and age-specific-death-rates (ASDR) by age, gender, and educational attainment for five years: 1993, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010. Absolute and relative differences in life expectancy and Age-Specific Death Rates by educational attainment were utilized as proxy measures of social inequality.ResultsClear educational gradient of life expectancy was observed at age 40 by both sexes and across five time periods (1993, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010). The gradient became notably worse in females between 1993 and 2010 compared to the trend in males. The educational gradient was also found for ASDR in all five years, but it was more pronounced in working age groups (40s and 50s) than in elderly groups. The relative disadvantage of ASDR among working age Korean adults, both males and females, became substantially worse over time.ConclusionsSocial inequalities in life expectancy and ASDR of the working age group across socioeconomic status over time were closely related to the widening of the social difference created by the macroeconomic crisis and the expansion of neo-liberalism in Korea.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Son et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.