Inequalities in Working and Health Expectancies at Older Ages in South Korea

Anastasia Lam , University of St Andrews
Katherine Keenan, University of St Andrews
Hill Kulu, University of St Andrews
Mikko Myrskyla, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Alongside South Korea’s increasing life expectancy comes increases in the length of working life, but whether that happens in good or poor health is less clear. Of the OECD countries, South Korea has one of the highest life expectancies, but also one of the highest proportions of older adults in the labour force and in poverty. South Korea lacks comprehensive social protection measures for older persons and retirement age is relatively low at 60 years old. Chronic diseases are the leading causes of death and multimorbidity incidence has been increasing over time. Using data from eight waves of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (2006-2020), we take a discrete-time multistate modelling approach to estimate working life expectancy (WLE) at age 60 with 0 disease, 1 disease, and multimorbidity and explore inequalities by sex, education, and urban/rural geography. We find that males have higher WLE than females, while females spend more time with disease. The low educated have higher WLE than the high educated and spend more of their WLE with disease. Rural dwellers also have higher WLE and spend more of their WLE with multimorbidity compared to urban dwellers. These findings have important implications for the welfare of older adults, particularly those with low education and from rural areas, who are working longer and in poorer health than their counterparts. It is important that these individuals are provided with sufficient health, social, and financial resources so that working becomes a choice rather than a necessity.

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 Presented in Session 29. Flash session Morbidity